CONTENTS
SECOND
SESSION — THIRTIETH LEGISLATURE
of
the
Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan
DEBATES
AND PROCEEDINGS
(HANSARD)
N.S. Vol. 67 No. 3B Monday, October
27, 2025, 19:00
[The Assembly resumed at 19:00.]
EVENING SITTING
Speaker
Goudy: — It now being 7 o’clock, we will
resume debate.
SPECIAL ORDER
ADJOURNED DEBATES
ADDRESS IN REPLY
[The Assembly resumed the adjourned debate on the address in reply which
was moved by Michael Weger, seconded by Terri Bromm, and the proposed amendment
to the main motion moved by Jordan McPhail.]
Speaker
Goudy: — I recognize the member from
Saskatoon Southeast.
Brittney
Senger: —
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will pick up where I left off. Last week
the MLA [Member of the Legislative Assembly] from Cumberland, someone I am
proud to call my colleague and my friend, delivered a powerful speech about his
experience with the wildfires. He demonstrated the kind of leadership that is
expected from any member of this Legislative Assembly. And frankly I am
disappointed that our own government didn’t step up in the way that the MLA
from Cumberland did.
Mr. Speaker, people in Saskatoon
Southeast were devastated to see the government’s inaction. While the Premier
was golfing, people were losing their homes, their businesses, and their
cabins. Mr. Speaker, residents in Saskatoon Southeast told me that they
believed this government did everything wrong in how they handled the
wildfires.
When the government failed, Saskatoon
Southeast stepped up. I was moved by the countless community members who
donated items to evacuees. Through their generosity we collected truckloads of
items that were delivered to evacuation centres. I have never been prouder to
represent a community that steps up for others. True leadership means showing
up when people need you most.
Mr. Speaker, this summer I learned of
another community devastated by government inaction, the town of Richmound. For two years a cult terrorized residents. They
filmed and photographed children. They dumped sewage in the street. They
intimidated and threatened and harassed locals. The community begged for help.
They reached out to their MLA. They reached out to the Premier, to anyone who
would listen. And still they were ignored. That is not leadership. That is
abandonment.
And it wasn’t the only failure. That
same MLA knew of a woman who he thought was being trafficked. And instead of
contacting the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police], he referred to her as
“pretty lady.”
Mr. Speaker, when I was the shadow
minister for the Status of Women, I asked this government what steps it was
taking to combat human trafficking. I was shown posters that hang in bathroom
stalls, posters that refer people to 211, a service that, based on their
website, is not equipped to handle labour trafficking.
Mr. Speaker, a poster is not a plan. We
need real investments in prevention, in survivor support, in training for
front-line workers. And yes, we need education. We need to allow third-party
educators back in schools.
Mr. Speaker, this Throne Speech fails
the people of Saskatchewan. It fails to make life more affordable. It fails to
address the health care crisis. It fails our educators, our social workers, our
families, our children, and people living with disabilities.
Saskatchewan deserves better.
Saskatchewan deserves a government that will listen, that acts, and that leads
with compassion.
So, Mr. Speaker, I cannot and will not
support this government’s Throne Speech as moved by the government, but I will
proudly support the amendment brought forward by the member from Cumberland.
Thank you.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the Minister of the Environment.
Hon. Travis Keisig: —
Well thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the famous words of former MLA Nancy Heppner,
“and now for something totally different.”
As always, Mr. Speaker, it’s a great
honour to rise and enter into remarks. It was a very busy summer filled with
many events, but I’m happy to be back in the House today with all of my
colleagues, debating the Speech from the Throne.
The day of the Throne Speech is always
very exciting, Mr. Speaker. The building is bustling with so much activity. We
all have friends, family, constituents sharing our excitement about Her Honour
delivering a speech, and just having so many people in the building, Mr.
Speaker, adds to that level. And I was very fortunate to even have guests
arrive from Texas and Montana, made the long trip up to see the Speech from the
Throne.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, my wife,
Sheila, was not able to make it this year as she was in Ottawa with SARM
[Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities] members advocating for the
people of the province. My wife does fantastic work, Mr. Speaker, and I’m very
proud of the work she’s done and continues to do for the province as the
president of the Rural Municipal Administrators’ Association. I’m very happy to
have a wife who not only supports every aspect of my career but also has such a
strong ambition to be successful and pave an incredible legacy for herself.
Before I get too far, Mr. Speaker, I
would be remiss if I did not thank other people who have assisted me in my
journey as your MLA. My daughters — I have to talk about them, Mr. Speaker —
are very passionate, hard-working, and I may be a little biased, but they sure
have turned out to be amazing young women.
My eldest daughter, Shannara, when she’s
not busy at work as an LPN [licensed practical nurse], is looking up her next
destination where she’s going to travel off to. She’s really got a travelling
bug, Mr. Speaker, but her and her boyfriend do have a lot of fun. And she
really enjoys her work as an LPN working within the province of Saskatchewan.
My younger daughter, Sharlize, started a
new job in Yorkton. She’s a veterinary technician and loves animals, loves her
work, loves the veterinarian she works with. And when she’s not at work, Mr.
Speaker, she is busy on the farm. Her and her boyfriend have rented a bunch
more land and have been very busy. And I can honestly say I have done more farm
work this year, Mr. Speaker, than I have in the last four years combined. It
was really good to get out and operate a combine and assist them with harvest.
You know, they did such a good job of planting the seeds, and very happy to
report to the House that they had a very successful harvest.
I also want to thank the people in the
building who keep this building running, Mr. Speaker, from the custodians to
the Clerks, you know, the legislative staff, the staff that works in caucus. I
want all of them to know that the work you do to keep this building running
smoothly is essential, and we appreciate everything that you do for us and the
people of the province.
And I also want to thank you, Mr.
Speaker. You have done some really good work with the Legislative Assembly
Service, starting the new program you have for the mock parliament. I was
really excited to have . . . Southey school was able to attend. They
were the inaugural school. It’s a great program that really teaches students
about how the legislative process works, and I’m going to be doing a lot of
lobbying to have other schools from my constituency attend, Mr. Speaker. You
did a fantastic job, and the Legislative Assembly Service did a great job on it
too.
I also want to thank you, Mr. Speaker,
on your work with the library staff on something that I planted the seed with
the Speaker and he has followed through with it. There is 296 rural
municipalities within the province of Saskatchewan. And the Speaker’s been very
passionate about this: there should be an RM [rural municipality] map for every
RM in the Legislative Library. And they are slowly getting there. I check in on
them every now and then to pull a map and see how they’re progressing. It’s a
slow process. The mail strike has kind of thrown a monkey wrench in, Mr.
Speaker, but they are doing great work at the library.
I also want to thank the team I have in
the building here, Mr. Speaker: my chief of staff, Kenneth; Kielle; Leona; and
Emily. Your hard work is evident, and I’m very grateful to have you as part of
the Environment team and assist me on my journey as Minister of the
Environment.
And there’s always that ongoing debate
in here, Mr. Speaker, about our constituency assistants. Tina has done
fantastic work serving the constituents of Last Mountain-Touchwood. We started
together. She’s been with me for over five years now, Mr. Speaker, keeps the
office running smoothly. And I really can’t say enough good things about her,
like her work ethic and her diligence and everything else. It’s noted by the
constituents, and it’s definitely noted by myself too. I truly have a great
team that kind of surrounds me, and I really appreciate all of them.
And I also have to thank the
constituents of Last Mountain-Touchwood, Mr. Speaker. None of us would be here
without the support of our constituents. And I really appreciate them reaching
out to me and understanding that your role in cabinet, it can be quite
demanding. But they are very honoured to have a member representing them in
Executive Council. And you have to say thank you, Mr. Speaker. You truly do.
It is also our duty, Mr. Speaker, as
members of the Legislative Assembly, to keep this province and its people
strong, safe, and secure. If we were to fail at this, we would be dishonouring
the legacy of all of those who’ve come before us. This is why ensuring that the
government works closely with our greatest asset — the people of the province —
to build confidence in our economy, so they can feel safe in their homes and
communities and that their future and this province’s future are secure.
When the Lieutenant Governor was
delivering the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Speaker, you may have heard the word
“legacy” being mentioned. And that truly made me think about how legacy plays
such an important role in a family unit. And I think back to the passing of my
father, Mr. Speaker, and since his passing, I’ve come to appreciate the
importance of building a legacy that both of my parents would be very proud of.
With each new generation our government
has the opportunity to build and improve on what those before us have built,
while ensuring we honour their hard work and the challenges that they faced.
What’s important about a legacy is that we take the situation we were left
with, the lessons we were taught, and begin to leave our own mark in history by
working together to build a stronger, safer, and more secure opportunity for
all the future generations.
There was lot of investments that are
going on in the constituency, Mr. Speaker. And one thing that I’m very excited
about and I know many of my constituents are excited about, it’s the passing
lanes from Highway 10 from Fort Qu’Appelle to Melville. This project includes
turning lanes and the construction of eight passing lanes. As we are sitting
here today, work is under way. They have culverts there now, Mr. Speaker, and
large cattle culverts for some of the livestock producers there.
When the initial announcement was made,
I had a lot of phone calls and text messages and constituents reaching out to
me and just, you know, one word: finally. They were very happy to see it moving
forward.
I always remember in 2013‑ish when the very first passing lanes in the province were
put in from Fort Qu’Appelle to Balgonie. That was the most dangerous stretch of
highway, Mr. Speaker, and when those passing lanes were built it was an
absolute game changer for safety and for productivity. They work very well.
They’re a very important part of our highway network, and people really, really
appreciate that.
Saskatchewan has also led the nation in
year-over-year job growth with the lowest unemployment rate, and leads the
country in capital investment growth. Our economy is the strongest economy in
Canada, Mr. Speaker. That did not happen on its own — took a great deal of work
and a group of forward-thinking individuals. And we also have to say, a lot of
hard work from our Premier.
Now it was truly an honour, Mr. Speaker,
to be asked to serve as Minister of the Environment. And you get a lot of great
opportunities. Earlier this summer, I was down in Estevan for the opening of
the new Sarcan recycling centre, and I also had an
opportunity to tour the Regina Sarcans.
Sarcan is, you know, truly a hidden gem in the
province of Saskatchewan, Mr. Speaker. It’s a leader in environmental
protection, job creation, and economic growth. I was really honoured to witness
first-hand, and got a real nice behind-the-scenes tour of the meaningful work
they’re doing for our province, our community, and our citizens.
Also, Mr. Speaker, this summer I had the
opportunity to head up to Denare Beach. You have to
really see some of the challenges they were facing after the wildfires, and I
went up there several times, met many of the community members. And you have to
see it to really get a handle on the scope of the challenges that they were facing.
I met with the local leaders to discuss
how our government could put families in the North first as they recover from
the severity of the fire season. Along with many of my colleagues, we met with
officials and were provided with regular briefings. Our government has
committed 20 million to support cleanup and debris management efforts.
[19:15]
The Ministry of Environment has worked
with Denare Beach and East Trout Lake on landfill
expansion plans for the wildfire debris. Now I really want to put this into the
record, Mr. Speaker. The plans were reviewed and the team at the Ministry of
Environment worked diligently, and it was approved later on that day. They had
the entire team focused on these landfill construction permits, and it flowed
seamlessly.
The team at the Ministry of Environment
did fantastic work, and I really want to thank them for all of their due
diligence. It’s greatly appreciated by the people of Saskatchewan. The wildfire
recovery task team is committed to community-centred recovery. We remain
committed to working together to rebuild in that northern part of the province.
Also this summer, Mr. Speaker, I had an
opportunity to join my colleague, the member from Moosomin. We did an aquatic
invasive species event at the boat inspection station on No. 1 Highway on
the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. You can’t have a Minister of the Environment
get to his feet without talking about aquatic invasive species, Mr. Speaker.
We truly see the devastating impact that
aquatic invasive species have, like zebra mussels, and they continue to spread
in Ontario, Quebec, and right next door in Manitoba and North Dakota. This
province is a premier destination for boaters, anglers, and anyone looking for
opportunities to enjoy the great outdoors. We know that Saskatchewan’s
thousands of beautiful lakes and rivers are a big part of what makes this
province so special.
Members of the public have a role to
play in reducing the risk of introducing AIS [aquatic invasive species] into
our waters by becoming knowledgeable on how aquatic invasive species can
unintentionally spread. The clean, drain, dry watercraft campaign ensures
everyone understands the risks and our government’s priority to ensure our
communities are safe and secure from aquatic invasive species. Prevention
efforts as a province have been very successful, and I’m happy to report that
no invasive zebra mussels have been found in Saskatchewan waterbodies to date.
We must remain diligent and continue to ensure Saskatchewan is free. And our
government is committed to ensuring that Saskatchewan’s economy also remains
the strongest in Canada.
Another environmental program I’ve had
the privilege of bringing forward, Mr. Speaker, is the derelict building pilot
program. We believe municipalities are best suited to know what they need when
it comes to disposing of them. This is a voluntary program, Mr. Speaker. It
will allow municipalities and our world-class volunteer firefighters to partner
and provide training opportunities that communities and fire chiefs deem
relevant. This pilot project will be totally voluntary and require sign-off
from both the municipality and the volunteer fire department. Applications are
now open for municipalities to start filling out, with an official start date
of November 1st. Our government is always putting families first by ensuring
Saskatchewan communities are safe and secure.
In the Throne Speech too, Mr. Speaker,
we talked about how the government will amend The Saskatchewan Firearms Act
to protect Saskatchewan gun owners from financial liability resulting from the
federal firearms prohibitions and preserve the right to receive fair
compensation, since the federal government continues to move forward on their
gun buyback program that takes firearms away from responsible, law-abiding
firearm owners.
This program will do nothing to reduce
firearm-related crimes across the nation. Our government will always continue
to ensure our communities are safe and secure by addressing the issue of
firearms-related crimes, and not going after legal firearm owners and our great
hunting community.
Also this summer, Mr. Speaker, I really
had the privilege of being elected president of the Pacific
NorthWest Economic Region, or PNWER.
PNWER is an organization representing the American
states of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska; the Canadian
provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan; and the territories
of Yukon and Northwest Territories. Combined, Mr. Speaker, we are the
11th-largest economy in the world, and we do a lot of work on cross-border
trade, animal health issues, economic corridors, among a myriad of other
things.
During these challenging times with our
neighbours to the south, these organizations truly show their value. We need
allies in our negotiations and people who are truly informed on the issues with
a deep understanding of just how intertwined our economies are, how all of us
benefit from free and unfettered trade moving north and south.
Last week, Mr. Speaker, I was in
Portland, Oregon for the PNWER economic forum, and I
had the opportunity to address many participants in both the public and private
industry sectors. And I talked a lot about widgets. Now I like to use the term
“widgets” to describe what your jurisdiction produces. In Saskatchewan’s case
it’s agri-food products, energy, fertilizer, forestry, and manufactured goods,
just to name a few.
You can produce the best widget in the
world, however it’s worth nothing if you can’t get it to your customer. Oregon,
Washington, BC [British Columbia], and Alaska have truly won the geographical
lottery by having access to tidewater, which allows them to ship their widgets
anywhere in the world. And there’s not only an economic case, Mr. Speaker, but
there’s also a moral case, I feel, to allow every jurisdiction to have the
ability to access those tidewater ports. Because in Saskatchewan we produce the
most environmentally, socially, and sustainably produced widgets, and we want
to get it to the global marketplace.
I just want to end on this note, Mr.
Speaker. Twelve months ago Saskatchewan people had a choice at the polls, and
they chose this Premier and this Saskatchewan Party to lead the province during
these challenging times. But like the Premier said, they also voted for change.
And that change was delivered.
An all-new cabinet that has been working
diligently alongside caucus on new energy policy, supporting our farm families
with land ownership review, and innovative ways of delivering health care all
across this province with one true goal in mind: to keep our economy strong,
keep our communities safe, and secure our future. So my children and your
children, Mr. Speaker, and all young people across Saskatchewan will have
opportunities to stay, work, and raise their families in Saskatchewan. And
that, Mr. Speaker, is truly the ultimate goal.
So with that, I will be supporting the
Throne Speech moved by the member from Weyburn-Bengough, seconded by the member
from Carrot River Valley. And I will not be supporting any amendments brought
forward by the opposition. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Saskatoon Eastview.
Matt Love: — Thank you, Mr.
Speaker. Very happy to rise tonight and present my response to the Speech from
the Throne. And before I get into some of the pleasantries that we start with,
I’ll just say this off the top. If I see any more cheering from members
opposite, they can say that they’re cheering for the Jays game. I’m going to
tell myself they’re cheering for what I have to say tonight. So they might want
to be careful if they’re checking the score.
Mr. Speaker, you know, it is an honour
to work in this building to represent the good people of Saskatchewan that we
all represent. And you know, over the last number of months, like many of us,
I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with my constituents in a number of ways.
In Saskatoon Eastview, knocked a lot of
doors this summer trying to stay in touch, you know. Like some of us had a big
boundary change, and those folks were new to me in the last election. So I made
sure to get out and knock on all of those doors this summer and reconnect with
all of those folks, and that was incredibly valuable. Number of community
barbecues, community association barbecues, our MLA barbecues, seniors’ teas,
the families that I get to coach and work with with
my kids’ sports. I coach some flag football and coaching some tackle football
this fall. I’m not there tonight, but when I’m there I help coach offensive
line with the KFL [Kinsmen Football League] Raiders.
I’ll have more to say about that later on.
You know, what I keep hearing from
people in my community in Eastview and around Saskatoon when folks come up and
chat with me at these events, at barbecues, on their doorstep, they always say
the same thing. And I know that we’ve heard this lots in the past, they say,
just keep going. You’re on the right track. Our province needs change. And they
encourage me to just keep going. I’ll tell you, I bring that encouragement with
me here to my seat on the floor of their Assembly.
Mr. Speaker, I want to say thank you to
a few people who support me in my work here. I’m going to start with my staff
back in my constituency office in Saskatoon. I’ve had lots of turnover. My
full-time assistant has been on mat leave for a number of months. Katie Edwards
had her second child back in the winter, and she’s taking time to be with her
young, growing family, which is amazing that we have the opportunity to do that
here in Canada and in Saskatchewan. And I wish her well as she cares for those
two young ones.
But recently I’ve had Sebastian Gardulski join me in my office. You know, it was a really
short job interview because he was already working in our shared office space
with the member from Saskatoon Southeast and had been a casual in my office.
And I had already seen the work, the quality of work that he brings each and
every day. So it was a pretty short interview, but I am incredibly thankful to
have him in my corner and on my team.
He is multi-talented, deep connections
in the community in Saskatoon, is incredibly well organized. And I think, most
importantly, he is deeply committed to the constituents of Eastview. And just
in the last week he has gone above and beyond to support some folks in
desperate need in my community. So I want to thank him for that, thank him for
being part of my team.
And I think most importantly, Mr.
Speaker, my family. You know, we all say a lot, and sometimes when things
become cliché we forget the deep meaning behind them, but none of us serve here
alone. And my family back home in Saskatoon, you know, it all starts with my
wife, Emma. She is not just the love of my life, she’s my person. She supports
me in what I do when I’m away from home. And she’s right now probably the
busiest that she’s ever been, taking care of our family and our three kids, our
home, our pets, running a business, supporting people in her circle, and
supporting a lot of folks in our community.
So I want to say thank you to her for
everything that she does, not just in support of me in this role but our family
and our community. She’s really an incredible person, and I’m very thankful to
share this life with her.
My daughter, Etta, you know, a lot of
members opposite often check in, and I just want to say how much I appreciate
that. You know, even the member from Willowgrove
came and watched her at a weightlifting competition back in June. And I want to
say, you know, how much I appreciate the support. She’s doing great. She’s on
the right track. She’s had a little bit of adversity this fall. She didn’t get
invited to a competition that, you know, we thought that she should have, and
I’ll save my opinions on that for another time. But you know, when your kid’s
faced a ton of adversity, she didn’t skip a beat. She just got right back to
training.
She’s working hard. She’s on the right
track, and you know, there’s a lot of travel in the year ahead. I think in the
next year she’s got to travel to Scotland, Egypt, and China, Venezuela. I’m
missing a number of places. So she’ll continue to represent our province and
our country internationally through the sport of Olympic weightlifting, and I
think she’s very much on track for the next Olympic Games in LA [Los Angeles]
in 2028. That’s her goal.
My son Tom, you know, again it’s one of
these clichés, like they grow up so fast. He’s 12 years old; he’s wearing size
13 shoes. And he played a basketball game the other weekend, and he did such a
good job rebounding. I couldn’t believe it. Like he’s not as tall as me, Mr.
Speaker. I’ve still got about 2 or 3 inches on him, but we stood next to each
other and raised our hands and he’s got a higher reach than me. He’s 12 years
old. And I remember holding this little baby boy. It feels like yesterday. And
he’s got a higher reach than me. And you know, it’s just one of those clichés.
They grow up so fast.
And he’s just, he’s on the right track.
I mentioned the team I help coaching earlier. He plays tight end for the KFL Raiders through Saskatoon Minor Football. We’re getting
to the end of an undefeated season. City finals coming up next week. I hope in
a week’s time, I’ve got a good story to tell about how that city final game
goes. But we’ve got a busy next week, and he’s watching game film with his team
tonight.
My youngest, Myles, you know, he’s
having a great year in grade 3. He’s working so hard at speech therapy this
fall trying to improve; you know, he wants to be understood. He’s working so
hard at it, and I just admire that. And something that I try and instill in my kids is that there’s two things that you can
always control and that’s your attitude and your effort. And if they’re
watching at home right now they’re probably laughing that I said that because
they hear me say it all the time. But you always have control of your attitude
and your effort, and I’m so proud of Myles the way that he brings his best,
most positive attitude and best effort to everything that he does.
And finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to
thank my colleagues, my colleagues in opposition. I get to work with incredible
people. And to each of them as a person, I appreciate the camaraderie and the
teamwork that we have. But there’s two that I just want to single out, and
those are the members from Athabasca and Cumberland.
[19:30]
You know, we’ve heard a lot about the
speeches that they’ve delivered in here and the integrity with which they
represent their constituents. It’s remarkable, and their constituents can be
very proud of the representation that they have here. And yes, that is often
emotional. They care so deeply about their communities and the people that they
represent.
And you know, earlier today, Mr.
Speaker, I heard an apology from the Premier. I’ll say it was unlike anything
that I’ve heard in here. I actually thought it was quite sincere and
commendable.
But you know, for these two guys,
they’ve only been here for a year, and they’ve already got it figured out that
leaders need to show up. And they have shown up for their constituents through
some of the worst times that they’ll ever experience — terrifying times being
evacuated from those wildfires — and they continue to show up for their
constituents right here in their Assembly. And I’m so proud to call them
colleagues.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank our
leader, the Leader of the Opposition. She’s a leader who continues to show up,
whether that’s showing up in the North when disaster strikes or showing up for
people here in Regina Lakeview in her constituency. She’s a leader who shows up
by putting other people first. She never makes it about herself. It’s never
about herself. She gives credit to others, always takes time to listen,
understand, and collaborate. And I think that those are key qualities for a
leader, and she embodies every one of them.
Now, Mr. Speaker, in response to the
Speech from the Throne, as shadow minister for Education, I want to take a few
minutes to talk about what I heard and went back and read through as far as
what was in the Speech from the Throne. You know, the items included that were
related to Education were really quite remarkable. Because while this
government has certainly earned a reputation for refusing to admit a mistake,
and they often double down on their biggest failures, we have some commitments
here and some things to discuss from the Speech from the Throne that I thought
were real admissions of past failures by this government, and I would say
ongoing failures from this government.
Number one is funding for education. You
know, in the Speech from the Throne we actually heard this government boast
about hiring 500 new teachers. That’s true; we have 500 new teachers, roughly,
working in the province this fall. But let me remind the Assembly that it is
not the government that we should be thanking for those new teachers. The
people that we should be thanking for these 500 new teachers are teachers. It
was teachers who stood up and fought for the conditions in our classrooms.
Now I do not remember seeing any Sask Party members outside in minus 35 degrees waving signs
calling for adequate funding for our schools. I don’t remember seeing any Sask Party MLAs marching up and down 8th Street in
Saskatoon or around Midtown mall in the dead of winter calling for the supports
that our students need.
I do remember, Mr. Speaker, seeing this
government fighting teachers tooth and nail, spending hundreds of thousands of
dollars putting up billboards to vilify teachers. I do remember this government
engaging in the longest teacher job action in the history of the province. And
why were teachers out there? Fighting for the supports that their students need
because of this government’s failure.
Now if this government asks their own
friends at the Fraser Institute, they’ll tell them that from the years 2013 to
2023, in their most recent study, the rest of the country saw education funding
go up nearly 6 per cent. When adjusted for inflation and enrolment, the rest of
the country saw a 6 per cent increase in education funding. Saskatchewan saw
nearly a 15 per cent decrease — 15 per cent decrease in per-student funding
adjusted for inflation and enrolment.
The result of that decade of failure is
that this province — by this government’s own numbers — in just the last four
years, before this school year, saw 15,000 new students and 86 fewer classroom
teachers. That is a decade of failure.
Now this government didn’t decide to
just listen. They didn’t see the light. They didn’t decide to invest in
education. This government got schooled. They got schooled by teachers who were
standing up for their working conditions because their working conditions are
our children’s learning conditions. That’s what happened, and I do not give
credit to this government for funding those teachers. That was the agreement
that they signed. They had to do it, Mr. Speaker.
Now the second thing that I heard in the
Speech from the Throne was about literacy rates and early years supports. It’s
great to see this government identify a problem that is a problem.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, it’s been a problem for a long time. That decade of
underfunding has had a negative impact on literacy rates in this province, and
of course it would. That makes a lot of sense.
In the Throne Speech they said, “Having
students read at the appropriate grade level is one of the most important
measures to guarantee future academic success.” And my question to the
government is, did they just figure this out now? Did they not know that early
years literacy was important when they cut $50 million from the education
budget in 2017? Did they forget this fact for an entire decade when they drove
education funding in Saskatchewan to last place? Did they just figure out now
that early years literacy is important for the health and prosperity of our
province? It’s actually quite remarkable to see that in a Speech from the
Throne.
The third area in education, Mr.
Speaker, was to see this government identify a problem, which is the slow — I
would call it a crawling — pace of building new schools. They said in the
Speech from the Throne that they would introduce legislation to avoid
“unnecessary delays in new school builds.” Well I’ve got news for members
opposite: that those unnecessary delays are nearly all of this government’s
making.
We have schools in this province that
were announced six years ago that are just now breaking ground. Six years of
waiting. I’d call that an unnecessary delay. This is not normal, and the
changes that this government brought in are the root cause of those delays.
Now everyone in the education sector can
see this. Everyone sees this, and I’m glad the Sask
Party government finally sees it. And I’m glad that they’ve identified a
problem that they created, but Mr. Speaker, I will reserve my judgment until I
actually see the legislation. As the saying goes, the devil is always in the
details. So we’ll wait and see what the solution is to the problem that they
themselves created.
Now, Mr. Speaker, as I wrap up, you
know, overall in the Speech from the Throne there’s really nothing new here for
the biggest issues that Saskatchewan people are facing. We have tariffs imposed
on our nation — impacting our province, many sectors of our economy — from
China and from President Trump. And we know how hard it is for members opposite
to stand up against President Trump and his job-killing and economy-crushing
tariffs. We know why they struggle to stand up to him, and I think that that’s
something that they need to answer to, Mr. Speaker.
We have a cost-of-living crisis. And
while we bring forward solutions and ideas when it comes to rent control, this
government refuses, despite the fact that today we had folks filling these
galleries, seniors on fixed incomes, who we represent that this government
refuses to listen to. We have a cost-of-living crisis. My question to the
government is, is everything as great as they said it was in the Throne Speech?
If people are doing so well, why are Saskatchewan people the most stressed in
the entire country about their finances? Saskatchewan people report the highest
financial insecurity in the entire country.
So if things are as great as they say it
is in the Speech from the Throne, who should we believe? And I’ll tell you,
we’re going to believe and rely on what folks are telling us. The people of
Saskatchewan are stressed about their finances, and this government needs to
get to work.
And finally, Mr. Speaker, when it comes
to health care, you know, we need big, bold changes to get health care out of
last place in Saskatchewan, and there was nothing new in the Speech from the
Throne, nothing to address the challenges. What I did hear was a lot of
boasting, a lot of back-patting when it comes to health care — quite
remarkable.
When we say that this government is out
of touch, this is the exact kind of garbage that we’re talking about: boasting
about the situation in health care on the same day that 450 actual health care
workers write to this government, sign their names, and publish that publicly
to say how bad the situation is in our biggest hospital in Saskatoon. That’s
what out of touch means. And we had a perfect display right here on Throne
Speech day.
And, Mr. Speaker, this Throne Speech
fails to deliver on anything new on the biggest issues that Saskatchewan people
face when it comes to tariffs, economic issues, cost of living, health care,
and education. And for that reason I will not be supporting the Speech from the
Throne. I will be supporting the amendment brought forward by my colleague from
Cumberland. Thank you.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Moose Jaw Wakamow.
Megan
Patterson: —
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now, as the MLA from Last Mountain-Touchwood said at
one time, “now for something totally different.”
It is a great privilege to rise in this
Chamber and respond to the Speech from the Throne. I want to begin by saying
how deeply honoured I am to serve the people of Moose Jaw and the province of
Saskatchewan.
First and foremost, I want to thank my
family for their love and support, which allows me to do this important work. I
want to thank my constituency assistants, Denise Maki and Carol Acton, for
their ability to connect with constituents and to keep me organized. I would
also like to thank the staff here at the legislature for all they do behind the
scenes, and of course to my colleagues for all their support. It is truly an
honour to work every day to improve the lives of the people of Moose Jaw and
our beautiful province.
As elected representatives we are called
to be servant leaders to put the needs of our province above our own. We must
remember at the end of the day every one of us here shares the same goal: to
make life better for the people of Saskatchewan. A more collaborative,
respectful approach would enable us to better serve the constituents we
represent and maintain a strong, growing province.
Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege though
for me to sit on this side of the Assembly with the government focused on three
key priorities: keeping our economy strong, our communities safe, and our
future secure.
A strong economy gives us the ability to
respond to challenges such as the devastating wildfires that impacted northern
Saskatchewan this summer. My heart goes out to all those affected. I want to
take a second to commend my colleague, the Minister of Public Safety, for his
strength and leadership during this crisis. Thank you to our public service,
the community leaders, firefighters, pilots, volunteers, and emergency
responders who worked tirelessly through these fires to keep people safe.
Due to our strong economy and strong
leadership, our government was able to respond by providing 15 million to
the Canadian Red Cross for direct support to residents, 10 million for
temporary housing, 20 million for community cleanup. And you have our
commitment to continue to work with you to rebuild your lives in any way
needed.
Mr. Speaker, a strong economy is the
backbone of our province. Right now Saskatchewan’s economy is not only strong,
it is the strongest in the nation. More people are working than ever before.
We’ve led the country in year-over-year job growth. There are more women, more
young people, and more First Nations and Métis people working than ever before.
We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada. And despite global
uncertainty, our economy remains relatively resilient, thanks to this
government’s strategic thinking.
Diversification has been key. Our
government’s foresight and long-term plan to expand export markets is paying
off. We now trade with 160 markets around the world and the value of our
exports has more than doubled since 2007, from 20 billion to over
50 billion annually.
[19:45]
We continue to see record investment and
growth. Saskatchewan’s real GDP [gross domestic product] is at an all-time high
of 80.5 billion, and this is up 2.6 from 2024.
We continue to lead the country in
capital investment growth. Capital investment in Saskatchewan reached
$16 billion, a 10 per cent increase over 2024, leading the nation. In
Moose Jaw, we have seen exciting local investments including the new pulse
flour mill by Simpson Seeds. This family-owned, homegrown business is now the
largest independently owned pulse processor and exporter in Saskatchewan.
Supported by our government’s incentive programs, this project creates more
jobs for our economy and adds more value here at home.
Mr. Speaker, last week was Small
Business Week, an important time to recognize that small businesses are the
heart of our province and the heartbeat of our communities. In Moose Jaw,
tourism is a key economic driver, generating roughly 134 million in
economic spinoff last year alone.
The Tunnels of Moose Jaw welcomed over
95,000 visitors, making it the most visited tourist attraction in the province.
Since opening in 2000, they’ve welcomed more than 2.3 million guests from
around the world. If you don’t know the story behind our notorious city, you
better plan a trip to Moose Jaw and call me when you get there.
I want to highlight three strong,
successful female business owners in Moose Jaw who all shared inspiring stories
at the WESK [Women Entrepreneurs Saskatchewan]
Business Women of Moose Jaw event recently: Kelly Gosselin, the owner of High
Regard Catering & Kitchen; Julie Howe, president of Bar Over HC Livestock;
and Elyce Simpson, president and CEO [chief executive officer] of Simpson
Seeds. It was an incredible evening of authenticity and inspiration, catered by
none other than High Regard Catering.
The downtown Moose Jaw business association
has been a vital force to nurturing our local business community, hosting
tourist events such as the Little Chicago Show ‘n’ Shine, Greek night, and the
Christmas In October which brought vibrancy to our downtown last weekend.
The recent launch of the Helping Hands
initiative reflects a deep commitment to community renewal, not only
beautifying downtown Moose Jaw but also providing hope and purpose to those on
their path to recovery. Volunteers, empowered by honorariums and expectations,
actively contribute by sweeping, collecting litter, and picking up broken glass
and debris.
Remarkably, nearly half of the
participants in this 12‑week program have found employment and no longer
live in government housing. This demonstrates the profound impact of
community-driven initiatives and the ability of the human spirit and body to
overcome challenges and the deep need for purpose.
Our local businesses give back every
day. They support the hospital foundation, sponsor youth events, and contribute
to countless community causes. They create jobs and generate the tax revenue
that vital programs and services access across Saskatchewan.
This government understands the
challenges that small businesses face, the risks that they take, the
investments that they make. That’s why we maintain one of the lowest
small-business tax rates and highest income thresholds in the country. We will
prioritize continuing to cut red tape and regulatory burdens so entrepreneurs
can continue to focus on what they do best.
Mr. Speaker, we know that despite our
economic strength, many families are feeling that a dollar today does not go as
far as it used to. But let us not forget the affordability crisis that we see
across Canada is a direct result of federal policy, policy supported by a
Liberal-NDP [New Democratic Party] coalition, which was policies of runaway
spending, printing of money, devaluation of the dollar, and inflationary taxes.
But despite all those challenges, Saskatchewan still remains the most
affordable place to live in Canada.
Our strong economy allows us to make
smart, targeted investments to help people make ends meet. These include
further income tax cuts, removing another 54,000 people from paying income tax
at all; enhancements to the personal care home benefit; first-time homebuyers
tax credit; graduate retention program; home renovation tax credit; active
families benefit; and the disability and caregiver tax credit. These aren’t
one-time measures. They provide lasting relief year after year.
Every person in Saskatchewan deserves to
feel safe, Mr. Speaker. This is why our government has committed to hiring 100
new police officers, 14 SCAN [safer communities and neighbourhoods] personnel,
and 70 officers within the marshals service. This is in addition to funding 180
new RCMP officers. Thanks to our Minister of Justice, these officers now have
more tools than ever before to keep communities safe. These new tools include
the safe public spaces Act, amendments to The Safer Communities and
Neighbourhoods Act, and The Trespass to Property Act.
I recently participated in two ride-alongs with the Moose Jaw Police Service. I was truly
impressed by their professionalism, compassion, and community engagement. From
crime prevention education to local initiatives that reduce theft and
vandalism, their work is making a difference. The care and compassion of the
Moose Jaw police force is evident. But all too common, the cause of the threat
to our communities and safety are the same — it’s often illegal trafficking and
drug use.
Mr. Speaker, this government knows that
public safety means addressing addiction. That’s why our government is
investing in 500 new recovery beds with nearly 300 already open across the
province. While the criminals who traffic these deadly drugs deserve to be
dealt with swiftly, our friends, family members, and loved ones who find
themselves caught up in addiction deserve compassion and care. While the
members opposite advocate for policies that prolong the struggle of addiction,
we recognize that the longer someone suffers, the greater the harm to
themselves, their families, and their communities. Their effects are often felt
across our entire province.
Our government does not believe in
offering another needle or pipe. There is no safe amount of illegal drug use.
Instead we are committed to making recovery the easiest, most accessible choice
through a fully implemented, recovery-orientated system of care.
We also know that there are some people
who simply are unable to seek treatment on their own because of the impact
these drugs have on their brain and decision-making ability. This is why we are
introducing the compassionate care intervention Act to help the small number of
individuals, whose addiction makes them a danger to themselves or others,
receive the care they need to recover and re-engage with their families and
society.
Mr. Speaker, our government is investing
to ensure our future is secure. We are making record investments in education
because learning today means success tomorrow. Our growing and strong province
means there are more students, so more schools and more classrooms are needed.
That is why our government is making record investments in education. We’re
investing in infrastructure, specialized classrooms, and more teachers. These
investments will help us ensure classrooms are manageable and students receive
the attention they need to succeed. This will enable teachers to focus on
teaching, and students to focus on learning.
In Moose Jaw, I’m especially proud of
the opening of the Coteau Hills Elementary and Our Lady of Hope Catholic
School, our city’s first joint-use school. This $68.2 million project
represents a significant investment in Moose Jaw’s future, providing modern
classrooms, shared spaces, and child care supports for students and families
for generations to come.
To ensure our future is secure, our
government is also investing in health care to ensure everyone gets the care
they need. Since 2022 we have added 346 doctors and over 2,000 nurses through
the most aggressive health care human resources action plan in the country. We
are expanding access to care, ensuring every resident will have a primary care
provider by 2028. Planning is under way for new urban care centres in Prince
Albert, North Battleford, and Moose Jaw, further demonstrating this
government’s commitment to bringing care closer to home.
Mr. Speaker, the people who built this
province didn’t only see challenges, they saw opportunity. This government will
honour their legacy by doing the same, facing challenges head on and providing
even more opportunities to the people of this province. The government will
continue to ensure Saskatchewan’s economy remains strong, our communities are
safe, and our future is secure.
I will be supporting the motion put
forward by the member from Weyburn-Bengough, seconded by the member from Carrot
River Valley. I will not be supporting the amendment. God bless you, God bless
Saskatchewan, and God bless the Blue Jays.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Saskatoon Meewasin.
Nathaniel Teed: — Thank you very
much, Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much, colleagues. It’s an honour to rise in
the Chamber here today to do a response to the Speech from the Throne.
But before I begin my response, Mr.
Speaker, I just want to take a moment to say thank you to a few people who are
important to me. You know, we always say we don’t serve alone in this Chamber.
And today I want to start by thanking my family, including my partner, James
Rayner, and my immediate family at home: my mother, Carolyn, and my sister
Melissa. I just want to say a big thank you for your constant love and support.
Now I’m going to leave it at that, Mr.
Speaker, because I know that all three of those folks are sitting at home
watching a baseball game and not watching my speech. So even if I say nice
things about them, they’ll have to find that in Hansard later, and they
probably won’t do even that. But always appreciative of their love and support.
I’m also very happy to say that our
immediate family bubble in Saskatoon got a little bigger this summer with
James’s mother, Kim Alexander, moving to Saskatoon with her husband, Jim, from
Grande Prairie. And so we’re really happy to have them a little bit closer to
home. We’d been working on them to move here for quite a while. Kind of the
central area where all the family seem to be gathering in the last couple
years. So pleased to welcome them here. They found a fabulous acreage just
outside of Saskatoon where they get to enjoy a lot of nature. It’s all
everything great about Saskatchewan: big skies, nature, trees, animals, dogs,
you know, the whole thing.
I want to also send a big welcome and
thank you to my new constituency assistant Avery Beaudin. Avery is no stranger
to the Saskatchewan NDP, having served as the constituency assistant to the
member from Regina Elphinstone-Centre and, for a short period, the member from
Saskatoon Eastview. Avery is passionate about making the lives of people in her
province better, and I have to say the people of Saskatoon Meewasin
are in great hands.
On September 26, I celebrated my third
year as a MLA, having won the Meewasin by-election on
September 26 in 2022. And to say that the time has flown by — as we all
probably say here and there about this job and about the nature of the work we
do — would be an understatement. So I just want to say a big thank you to all
the folks in Saskatoon Meewasin who renewed their
faith in me in the last provincial election and elected me the first time in
2022.
Mr. Speaker, it’s been a busy
spring-summer since we last left this Chamber in May. Our Saskatchewan NDP team
has been in every corner of the province engaging with residents and being
propositional every step of the way. When the crises hit the North, our
northern MLAs and our leader were there with the communities most affected.
They were there every step of the way, proposing solutions and calling on the
government to act as thousands were evacuated and hundreds lost their homes and
property.
[20:00]
I want to thank the member from
Cumberland for his impassioned response last week. I know the people of the
North have two very strong advocates in the member from Cumberland and the
member from Athabasca.
On other fronts, Mr. Speaker, as
Saskatchewanians saw the worst rental increases in the country over the last
eight months, our housing shadow minister acted quickly. She held
consultations, talking with seniors and families and folks on SIS [Saskatchewan
income support] and SAID [Saskatchewan assured income for disability], all
folks deeply affected by the steep rent increases, and all to start us on the
path toward a Saskatchewan where people in Saskatchewan have access to
affordable housing.
She launched a website called Rent
Control Now! to continue gathering that feedback on future rent control
legislation. Saskatchewan remains one of the only jurisdictions in Canada
without regulations in this space, and I believe that it’s gravely needed. I’m
so proud to work with our team, work with this team, work alongside them doing
that work to bring forward important rent control legislation later this fall
to address the concerns of both renters and landlords alike.
And as our health care system continued
to spiral and to collapse this summer and the mental health and addictions
crisis continued to rage after 18 years of cuts and poor policy, our health
care shadow ministers have been there every step of the way, travelling across
Saskatchewan, advocating for health care workers wherever they’re needed. Every
member of this team took summer to engage with their stakeholders and to keep
pressing the government for solutions.
So much also happened this summer. We
had a fantastic MLC [Midwestern Legislative Conference] conference. And I have
to say a big shout-out to the members from Saskatoon Willowgrove
and Estevan for the fantastic work that they did putting together a really
world-class conference that brought so many folks to Saskatoon, really
highlighted the gem of a city that we had.
And it was really talked about later in
the summer when I was able to attend BILLD [Bowhay
Institute for Legislative Leadership Development] for the first time, with the
member for Moose Jaw Wakamow and the member from Kindersley-Biggar. It was
talked about in those rooms of just how fabulous the MLC conference was here in
Saskatoon and how all those folks from across the Midwest had gathered here.
And then we all got to gather in Madison
to really take a kind of an intensive leadership course, and I say intensive.
There are like five-minute breaks working like 8 to 8 every single day. It was
a really important opportunity, and I’d really encourage anyone who has the
chance to take in BILLD, to take it.
In July, Mr. Speaker, I was also
honoured to be named the first shadow minister of 2SLGBTQ
[two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or questioning]
affairs in Saskatchewan’s history by our leader, Carla Beck. I’m proud to
represent this community in their Legislative Assembly, and I’m proud to add
this to my role as the shadow minister for Labour, Workplace Safety, and the
Public Service Commission.
Mr. Speaker, it was under the auspices
of my new role that I got to make my Power & Politics debut this
summer. I got a chance to go on the national stage and talk about this
government’s record, Mr. Speaker. What I talked about is the second-worst job
creation record in the country. The second-worst GDP growth in the country
under this Premier. Second-lowest minimum wage. Now at the time, we were the
last in the country for minimum wage. We’ve come up one since.
Worst health care funding in the
country. Worst surgical backlogs in the country. You know, we have the worst
per-student funding in the country. The highest rates of financial insecurity
and the highest mortgage arrears in the country. That is the government’s
record that I was able to talk about.
But I was also able to talk about
something else that’s really important to me. And it was about the harm that
this government continues to do, to inflict on queer and trans youth in our
province through the dangerous Bill 137.
Now you might ask what got
. . . I guess I’m allowed to say my own name? No. What got the member
from Saskatoon Meewasin on Power & Politics
this summer? Well it all started with a surprise shout-out from one very
special pop icon, Chappell Roan, when she sang her now-iconic lyrics. And I’ll
clean them up for parliamentary language. I was looking for a clean edition; I
made my own. I quote:
I made a promise if
in four months’ time,
This feeling ain’t gone,
Well forget this
city.
I’m moving to
Saskatchewan.
And I think that people across the
province were a bit lit up by hearing our beautiful province mentioned on an international
stage. And I have to say, so Chappell Roan is a bit of a queer icon, a bit of
an icon within our community and has an international platform.
And so our team took quick action. We
penned a letter to Chappell’s management inviting her to visit Saskatchewan.
And it went off, Mr. Speaker, I guess. You know, I don’t like to use the word
“viral.” I don’t know, I don’t like to say that whatever I’m doing is actually
going viral. But it went off a bit, Mr. Speaker . . . [inaudible].
And in that letter we explained that,
you know what, Saskatchewan is a beautiful place, but we have a political
environment where we’ve seen the notwithstanding clause used against children
to roll back the human rights of children and attack queer and trans youth in
our province. And so I wrote the letter. I got to talk about those things this
summer. It was quite the highlight.
So
on the floor of this here Legislative Assembly today, Mr. Speaker, I want to
renew that invitation. Chappell, we’d love to welcome you to Saskatchewan. We
would love to show off this beautiful province that we call home. And we’d love
to talk about all the issues that are facing Saskatchewan’s queer and trans
community.
Mr. Speaker, I will always use my time
to speak in this Chamber on behalf of my community and will continue to call on
this government to repeal Bill 137; to restore third-party educators who teach
important consent, bodily autonomy, and sexual health; and rebuild the
government’s now non-existent relationship with that queer and trans community.
Now, Mr. Speaker, on to the Throne
Speech. This is the fourth Throne Speech that I’ve had the pleasure of being a
member in this Chamber and witnessing. As is custom, the Throne Speech of
course lays out the government’s agenda, and if you took the government’s word
for it, everything is pretty hunky-dory in Saskatchewan. Everything’s great.
Nothing to see here, folks. But herein lies the problem, is that when you look
a little bit closer, when you look just below the surface, the facade of that
starts to crack a little.
What this Saskatchewan Party government
won’t tell you — and like I’ve said before — we are last place when it comes to
health care and education; the residents of Saskatchewan have some of the worst
rates of financial insecurity; and crime rates are double the national average
under this government.
But nowhere is this facade cracking more
than in the crisis in our health care system, and I want to look at that crisis
through the lens of the workers who work in that health care system, as the
shadow minister of Labour. Because as we said about the teachers, our teachers’
working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. It’s the same for
health care workers. Health care workers’ working conditions are our patients’
health care conditions, Mr. Speaker.
So let’s look at health care. Under this
government we have the worst surgical wait times in the country, the lowest
levels of health care funding in the country. And we’ve seen a mass exodus of
both rural and urban health care workers leaving for other jobs or other
provinces. The workers who remain haven’t received a wage increase in almost
three years, making them the lowest paid health care workers in the country.
And nowhere in this Throne Speech did
the government acknowledge that just days before they had their Throne Speech,
450 health care workers signed an open letter to the Premier and the Minister
of Health decrying the war zone-like conditions they are facing at Royal
University Hospital.
In rural Saskatchewan, the crisis isn’t
just hallway medicine, Mr. Speaker. It’s whether your emergency room will be
open at all. All summer long we watched as rural ERs
[emergency room] shuttered and they would send folks to another ER that was
also shuttered. We call that the Kamsack shuffle on this side of the House, Mr.
Speaker.
The state of Saskatchewan health care is
in shambles after 18 years of this Sask Party
government’s rule. It’s time for big, bold changes in health care, and that’s
our promise.
Now not only did 450 health care workers
pen an open letter, Saskatchewan’s three major health care unions also wrote to
this government. Mr. Speaker, just this week, leaders from CUPE [Canadian Union
of Public Employees] 5430, SEIU-West [Service Employees International
Union-West], and SGEU [Saskatchewan Government and
General Employees’ Union] — the three main health care-provider unions — wrote
a joint letter to this Premier urging him to keep his word and fix the health
care crisis.
They reminded the Premier that a year
after the Sask Party was narrowly re-elected, health
care workers have yet to see any meaningful improvements. In their words:
Health care workers
are at a breaking point. Short-staffing is leading to closures in every corner
of the province. Workers are leaving the profession and not coming back. And
patients are paying the price.
Together these unions represent nearly
30,000 health care workers in Saskatchewan, and they are united in demanding
that the government finally invest in the people who make health care work.
What was completely lacking from this Throne Speech was a commitment to get to
the table and sign a deal to ensure that health care workers who have gone
three years without a raise because this government continues to slow-walk
those negotiations finally get a raise and the respect that they deserve.
Mr. Speaker, I have been proud to stand
in solidarity with health care workers across this province who deserve a fair
deal from this government. It’s time to get to the table and sign a deal.
Nowhere in this speech do we see those concerns addressed.
Now I don’t have time to delve into some
of the other issues — the last-in-the-country per-student funding that we
continue to see, skyrocketing crime rates, and a dismal economic growth. But I
want to highlight one other area where the Throne Speech was pretty silent.
We saw a Throne Speech nearly silent on
the Chinese tariffs crippling our canola sector and absolutely no plan laid out
with the escalating trade war imposed on Canada by US [United States] president
Donald Trump. What has our soft stance on Donald Trump gotten us thus far?
Absolutely nothing, Mr. Speaker. And on Chinese EVs [electric vehicle] and
tariffs, after flip-flopping all summer on Chinese EVs, the government again
offered almost nothing in the Throne Speech. Canola producers have been left
adrift.
We have the worst surgical wait times in
the country. As my colleague said, it’ll take a long time to get that shoulder
and back surgery done with all the back clapping that we’re seeing from this
government. And, Mr. Speaker, I was not elected to pat the Premier on the back
and tell him he’s doing a good job.
Canola producers, all producers in this
province deserve a better deal.
So, Mr. Speaker, in closing, the people
of Saskatchewan deserve a government that’s going to deliver results, not empty
words. They deserve health care that works, affordable housing, a fair and just
economy, and respect for all communities.
My Saskatchewan NDP colleagues and I
will continue to fight for real solutions, meaningful investment, and bold
action in this Chamber and across every corner of our province. We will stand
with workers. We will stand with families, with communities. And we will
continue to hold this government accountable every step of the way because, Mr.
Speaker, Saskatchewan deserves better and we will not stop until we get it.
So, Mr. Speaker, with that I will not be
supporting the government’s Throne Speech. Instead I’ll be supporting the
motion put forward by my colleague from Cumberland and seconded from Saskatoon
Chief Mistawasis. Thank you very much.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the Minister of Government Relations.
Hon. Eric
Schmalz: —
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am thankful for the opportunity that I have to serve
the people of Saskatchewan and represent the constituency of Saskatchewan
Rivers for the last 12 months. It is a privilege that I do not take for
granted. As I reflected on everything that has happened since the last Throne
Speech, I have been struck how much can truly take place in a year. I am proud
of the work of the Government of Saskatchewan, and I am happy for the
opportunity to both reflect on this past year and look forward to the future of
our province.
First of all I want to take a few
minutes to highlight some of the incredible individuals and initiatives in and
around my home constituency of Saskatchewan Rivers over the past year. My job
as Minister of Government Relations is all about supporting communities, so it
gives me great pleasure to recognize some of the individuals in my constituency
who work hard to make their communities great. People like Christopher Lake’s
Citizen of the Year, Dwight Desormeau; Maisie Krienke, who does great work in
Big River to fundraise in support of community initiatives and youth
recreational opportunities like the Timber Ridge ski hill.
Recreation spaces like these in our
communities are so critical, and I’m happy that this year included the opening
of the Prince Albert Lake country co-op leisure centre. This incredible
facility will serve Saskatchewan residents from across the North, including
those in my constituency, in Batoche, and of course the city of Prince Albert.
[20:15]
Over the course of my 14 years of
service in the RCMP I saw first-hand a strong relationship between
opportunities for youth recreation and increased community safety. These
facilities aren’t simply rinks, pools, and field houses. They are spaces that
provide insulation from unsafe situations while helping vulnerable youth forge
strong social connections, develop teamwork, and engage in meaningful hobbies.
In addition to the recreational centres,
community facilities provide a place for municipalities to gather and events to
happen. This past year I had the opportunity to attend fundraising events for
community centres in Garrick and Choiceland. Seeing
communities come together and support such important spaces is incredibly
encouraging. It’s strong, unified communities like this that define
Saskatchewan.
This same spirit was evident throughout
the year in a number of events that brought people together to celebrate
culture, service, and community pride — events like the Métis gala which
showcased the rich heritage and vibrant traditions of the Métis people that
reminds us of the importance of cultural connection and identity.
The marshals’ swearing-in ceremony was
another proud moment, honouring those who have committed themselves to service
and safety in our province.
Each of these events, whether
celebratory or ceremonial or reflective, demonstrate the strength and unity
that define Saskatchewan Rivers and the province of Saskatchewan.
While there has been lots of celebration
in my home constituency, there have also been challenges. With agriculture and
forestry being important industries in Saskatchewan Rivers, my constituents
have felt the impact of tariffs from America and China over the past year.
These tariffs are hurting Saskatchewan industries and this government is
working hard to ensure economic stability for our producers.
I want to recognize all northern
communities who were impacted by wildfires this season. I deeply sympathize
with the fear and trauma that comes from losing your home. The emotional toll
of such an experience is profound, and I recognize the grief and sense of loss
that accompanies the devastation of losing one’s home.
A home is more than just a structure. It
is a place of safety, memories, and connection. When it’s taken away it leaves
a lasting impact. As a neighbour and as the minister, I want to acknowledge the
difficulty of these circumstances, reaffirm this government’s commitment to
supporting affected individuals and communities as they rebuild, recover, and
heal.
I want to acknowledge that communities
across northern Saskatchewan endured some of the most challenging conditions in
recent memory. The wildfires brought fear, disruption, and uncertainty to many
families and individuals, stretching local resources and testing the resilience
of the North — testing it, Mr. Speaker, but not breaking it.
This year’s wildfire season was unlike
any we’ve seen before. The scale, intensity, unpredictability of the fires were
unprecedented, driven by extreme weather conditions and dry landscape. Thanks
to the swift action of emergency responders, local leadership, and community
members, we are deeply grateful that no lives were lost.
I would like to extend my gratitude to
all those who worked tirelessly to mitigate the impact of these fires, not
least of all the firefighters who came from far and wide to fight these fires
on the front lines. As Minister
Responsible for First Nations, Métis and Northern Affairs,
I’ve had the privilege of witnessing first-hand the strength and solidarity of
northern communities. Despite the adversity, residents came together and
supported one another, protecting their homes and demonstrating an unwavering
commitment to their neighbours and land.
Specifically I want to acknowledge the
communities of Denare Beach, East Trout Lake, and La
Ronge. The devastating impact in these communities is significant and has been
felt across the province. My sympathy goes out to these communities who have
lost so much and have much work ahead of them. I look forward to continued
opportunities to meet with you and support your communities. To these
communities, your government has not and will not forget about you. We are
committed to work together with you to rebuild and restore what was lost.
Throughout the past number of months I
have made several visits to northern communities to meet with residents, assess
the situation on the ground, and ensure that provincial support was reaching
those who needed it most. These visits reinforce the importance of partnerships
with northern leaders and communities. During one of our recent northern
visits, I had the honour of joining our Premier to deliver a formal apology in
Ile-a-la-Crosse for the province’s role in the residential school system. This
marked a step forward in our journey toward reconciliation, healing, and
justice for survivors and their families.
Continuing to partner and support First
Nations, Métis, and northern communities and organizations will be key in
restoring a strong, safe, and secure future for northern Saskatchewan.
In spite of challenges in parts of our
province, Saskatchewan municipalities are in a season of opportunity.
Saskatchewan is a strong and growing province, and many of our cities are eager
to expand and develop. Cities like Regina, Yorkton, and Moose Jaw are seeing
unprecedented growth and are excited at the opportunity that the construction
of key infrastructure would present.
Earlier I mentioned the opening of the
Lake Country Co-op Leisure Centre in Prince Albert. This is one of many
Investing in Canada infrastructure projects that opened this year. The ICIP
[Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program] program enabled municipalities to
partner with the provincial and federal governments to fund critical projects
across our province.
I am proud to take a moment now to
recognize some of the milestones from the past 12 months of ICIP projects. The
following represents significant investments in municipalities all around
Saskatchewan: the grand opening of the Martensville Recreation Centre;
groundbreaking of the town of Delisle’s replacement sewage lift station and
force main; groundbreaking on Muskoday First Nation
cultural centre; grand opening of the Buffalo River Dene youth centre; grand
opening of the Meadow Lake Co-op recreational centre; grand opening of the Kemoca regional swimming park, pool, and main facility
enhancement; grand opening of the town of Balgonie’s aquatic centre; grand
opening of the White Bear First Nations community spray park; groundbreaking of
the city of Regina’s aquatic centre; grand opening of the town of Wilkie
swimming pool; grand opening of the town of Langenburg rest stop and walking
trail; grand opening of the town of Moosomin water treatment plant; grand
opening of Lloydminster Cenovus Energy Hub recreation facility; grand opening
of the city of Melville wastewater treatment system and expansion just last
week, Mr. Speaker.
These represent just a portion of the
$700 million invested across over 400 projects in our province through the
ICIP program, a program that is no longer available for new projects to access.
This June I attended
provincial-territorial meetings in Saint John, New Brunswick. In these meetings
I connected with the federal Minister for Housing, Infrastructure and
Communities Canada, Gregor Robertson. The feedback I heard from my federal
counterpart was that Saskatchewan in many ways had been in a blind spot with
regard to the federal government. This conversation inspired a delegation to
Ottawa earlier this month comprised of leaders from Saskatchewan’s seven
largest cities: Regina, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Moose Jaw, Swift Current,
Yorkton, and North Battleford, as well as representatives from SUMA
[Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association], and of course our
all-important rural communities represented by SARM and president Bill Huber.
We are a government that believes in
listening to the needs of our municipalities. Partnerships with our municipal
and federal partners are critical to building a strong, safe, and secure
province. This Throne Speech highlights these partnerships, identifying record
investments in community infrastructure across our province. Between our
funding programs and partnerships, this provincial government has invested over
$1.1 billion into municipal infrastructure since 2018.
When accounting for municipal
revenue-sharing programs in the same time frame, that figure is over
$3 billion invested in municipalities to secure growth and sustainability.
This government is excited to engage in partnerships to continue our strong,
safe, and secure province.
Before I end today I would like to take
some time to acknowledge key individuals who have supported my work over this
past year and beyond. Thank you to my wife, Lesley, for your sacrifices and
hard work back home which allows me to serve the people of Saskatchewan in this
capacity. Thank you to my kids for reminding me every day of Saskatchewan’s
next generation. It is your future we are investing in today.
To my constituency assistant, Kristina
Ross, who is also a veteran of our military, Mr. Speaker, thank you for being
the first point of contact for the Saskatchewan Rivers constituency. To the
staff in my minister’s office — Ryan, Candace, Zach, and Alex — thank you for
your diligent work day in and day out.
I would like to thank the First Nations
chiefs, councils, and Elders that I have met with over this last year, and
thank you for sharing your knowledge and guidance with me. I will also take
this opportunity to thank every mayor, councillor, administrator, and municipal
staff member. The work you do is so important to the communities not only in
the constituency that I call home but across this province. This is especially
true for municipal leaders in communities that have been affected by the fires.
Thank you once again for the bravery and
hard work of the firefighters and emergency responders, for the long hours and
hard work in the face of these wildfires. Equally as important, Mr. Speaker, I
also want to thank the communities and their residents for supporting
firefighting and evacuation efforts across our great province.
In closing, I am excited about our
partnerships across this province, whether those are municipal, federal, or
with Indigenous organizations. The future of Saskatchewan is in good hands, Mr.
Speaker. And with that I will not be supporting the amendments. However I am
happy to support the motion in support of the Speech from the Throne. Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Regina Douglas Park.
Nicole Sarauer: — Thank you, Mr.
Speaker. It’s my honour to rise this evening and enter into the Throne Speech
debate. It’s always a pleasure and an honour to get to participate in the
democratic process broadly speaking, but in particular entering into Throne
Speech debate and budget debate. It’s really the opportunity for everyone in
the legislature to have a chance to speak about their constituents, speak about
their families, but even more importantly speak about the issues that matter to
both them and the people that they work so hard to serve, Mr. Speaker. So like
I said, it’s an honour to be here again this evening.
Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I
didn’t take this opportunity to thank my family. As we always say but cannot
say enough, we do not serve alone. I know that my family makes a lot of
sacrifices for me to be able to do this work, and I am extremely grateful to
them to be able to do that.
I feel like last time . . .
I’m often doing this Throne Speech debate talking about Halloween because we
are usually really close to Halloween. And I’m usually in a bit of a
semi-chaotic state trying to get Halloween sorted for my kids each year because
the costumes tend to change on a whim.
This year my kids were very set in what
they wanted to be, which I was very grateful for because I was able to actually
get them costumes in advance. It may have been last year or the year before —
we had night sitting, I think, the day before Halloween — and I had to employ
the help of a few friends to find a costume for my son, who randomly changed
his demand of what he wanted to be on a whim that day. So very grateful I
didn’t have to go through that process this year.
For those who are interested, I’m sure
everybody is on bated breath to know what are they going to be this year. Well
my four-year-old, he wanted to be two things. He wants to be a slice of pizza
for daycare and a banana for door knock . . . or for not door
knocking. Oh my goodness. For trick-or-treating. That just shows the level of
maybe I’ve been doing this a little bit too long when I automatically think I’m
going door knocking with my kids instead of trick-or-treating. That is a really
big sign, Mr. Speaker, to get out and do some other things in life.
My daughter though, like most girls I
think aged 6, 5 to 13 this year, is being a KPop
Demon Hunter. She’s being Rumi, which is the main character, the lead girl. And
if you have seen the show, she has a very intricate hairstyle. It’s like a
purple-haired dragon braid situation.
I am not a creative person. My husband
is not a creative person either. We’re both lawyers. We became lawyers because
we’re not creative, Mr. Speaker.
[20:30]
But I have spent a lot of time watching
Instagram and trying my best to formulate a braid for her for Halloween. I
think I’ve got a subpar situation going that I think will hopefully pass her
very stringent requirements. So if you don’t see me next week, Mr. Speaker,
it’s because I haven’t survived Halloween and the stress of trying to make the
appropriate braid for this particular costume, Mr. Speaker.
But if you are wondering, if you don’t
have younger children and you’re wondering what sort of costumes you’re going
to see on your doorsteps, you can expect about 60 to 70 per cent of them to be
some form of KPop Demon Hunter costume because it’s
very, very popular. And it’s a great show, may I say, Mr. Speaker. I would
highly recommend it to anybody who is interested in watching something on
Netflix or for some, whatever reason doesn’t like to watch baseball, Mr.
Speaker.
I also want to take this opportunity to
thank my constituency assistant, Paige McKillop . . . The Premier is
giving me the soda pop hand gesture. I refuse to do the dance. I would strongly
encourage the Premier to do the dance next time he has a scrum. Maybe we’ll do
it together tomorrow after question period. I think that would be a lot of fun
and show some sort of bipartisan, cross-party solidarity — which I think is
what the people really want to see, Mr. Speaker — and I’m very happy to contribute
to that process.
Like I was saying, my CA [constituency
assistant], Paige McKillop, she’s been in my office for just over six months
now. She’s been a fantastic addition to my office. She serves the constituents
so, so well. I’m so happy to have her there. I know that she’s been a great,
reassuring voice to so many people who come to our office especially who have
concerns about access to social services benefits, is a huge problem that we
often see coming through my office. And Paige has done a phenomenal job of
leading our constituents through the process and trying to do what we can to
advocate for them for all of their needs. So I’m so thankful to Paige for
providing that service and helping me be able to be here knowing that my
constituency office is in such good hands.
And we did a lot of work within the
constituency this summer that I want to speak about very briefly, Mr. Speaker.
We made sure that we made a priority right after spring session ended in May to
canvass the constituency, to do some door knocking, speaking to as many
constituents as possible. And we were able to reach out to half of the riding
in the month of June, Mr. Speaker, Paige and I and a team of support that we
had, and were able to really hear right in the front line in terms of what
folks were concerned about, what they wanted to see from their elected
representatives, and what hopes and dreams they had for their province and for
their families, Mr. Speaker.
And I always find that to be such a
useful experience and so helpful in being able to ground us and frame the work
that we’re trying to do. Because you can do as much polling as you want, or you
can sit in the Chamber and have debates. But it’s really doing that front-line
work in terms of going door to door, talking to your constituents, and actually
asking them, “What do you want to see from your elected representatives?” where
you get the freshest ideas and the most honest thoughts as well, Mr. Speaker.
And every year — I’ve been doing this
for about 10 years now — every year I’m always humbled by how many people are
willing to share their life stories with us as elected representatives. And
it’s such an honour to be able to get to do this work, and such a humbling
experience. Because I think a lot of people trust their sometimes most painful,
most intimate stories to us, and you share that story in the hopes that we will
use it to advocate for better for the province. Not just for them, but for
their neighbours, for everyone in Saskatchewan.
And that’s not something that I take
lightly. I think that’s not something that any of us take lightly, Mr. Speaker.
It’s a heavy weight on our shoulders, but it’s a very important weight that we
have the opportunity to get to do that, Mr. Speaker.
We also attended . . . I know
my colleagues and I were around the province doing tons and tons of outreach,
attending events like crazy. A lot of barbecues, a lot of powwows, a lot of
incredible community-building opportunities.
I wanted to talk about one in particular
I really enjoyed that I hadn’t had the opportunity to go to before, and that is
the Pilot Butte Rodeo, Mr. Speaker. It is a lot of fun. I missed, sadly — for
probably the first time since being elected — the Regina Pride parade to attend
the Pilot Butte Rodeo, and it was a blast. I brought my four-year-old with me.
We went to the parade in the morning in Pilot Butte and then the rodeo after,
and he loved it. He absolutely loved it. It’s amazing how close you can get to
the action, and it’s definitely an event that I will be taking my entire family
to again.
My son afterwards has talked about the
rodeo multiple times. We were at Boston Pizza one night and a rodeo, I think it
was probably Calgary Stampede, was on the TV. And so he was explaining it to my
daughter and they were quite enamoured.
So we’re planning, we’re trying to
organize with some friends and their kids a trip to Agribition
this year, check out the rodeo there because my kids are absolutely hooked. My
husband is thinking about maybe putting him in the sheep riding, where you take
and stick your little kid on the sheep and send them . . . Yeah, it’s
called something specific that he said to me, and I was like, what, what is
that?
Anyways now I’m really . . .
Okay, thank you. Now I’m making myself look like an urbanite so I need to stop
talking now. But we’re very excited. We’re mulling over whether we’re going to
stick them on that sheep rodeo situation, but we really enjoyed the Pilot Butte
Rodeo. And I’m very grateful to the new friends and the old friends that I made
at that particular event.
Also had the opportunity to do quite a
bit of advocacy based on the outreach that we were doing and the folks that we
were talking to in particular, with my file being Justice, Corrections,
Policing and Public Safety. Did a lot of work consulting on public safety. And
what we heard brought back to us is a need for a government that is both tough
on crime but also tough on the causes of crime. It’s not just one or the other.
You need both to be able to seriously address crime.
And it’s a huge concern for people
throughout the province. We have rising rates of crime, in particular rising
rates of gun-related crime and domestic violence, Mr. Speaker. There was a
drive-by shooting in my constituency that happened in Eastview a few months
ago, Mr. Speaker. And in that shooting, a young girl, an 11‑year-old girl
was harmed quite seriously. Thankfully she survived. She is now out of the
hospital from what I understand. There have been several people who have now
been charged. And I very much thank the Regina Police Service for their
tireless dedication and the work that they did in addressing that issue.
That’s just to say that it’s an issue
throughout the province I think, Mr. Speaker. And it’s something that we need
to continue to address. And we need to continue to talk about what we can be
doing at our level of government to address this concern and help solve this
problem and alleviate the stress that I think a lot of people in Saskatchewan
are facing right now.
Another one that I’ve had the honour of
advocating for is for a fallen first responder medal. Now I know there is no
one in this Chamber that doesn’t see the value of our first responders. And I
think all of us can’t show enough gratitude to them for the work that they do
on behalf of the people of this province.
I had the opportunity to meet an
individual by the name of David Reed who is a military veteran, but he’s also
an advanced care paramedic. And he’s had a pretty incredible career. But what
he is advocating for right now with the support of many in the community — many
in the first responder world including the Saskatchewan police federation, the
Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police — is for a medal that can be
presented to the families of those who have lost their lives in the line of
duty or due to PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. Because those are both
very important things that we as a province should be thanking the families
for.
And I’m grateful to the Minister of
Justice who has created — and I know this was work that has been happening
behind the scenes for a few years now — a dedicated memorial that will be
created in short order, that will help to be a place for families and the
public to go to be able to recognize these first responders and thank them for
their service.
In addition to that, Mr. Speaker,
though, is the need for a medal — something that can be handed down from
generation to generation. So I just raised that because it’s been an absolute
honour of mine to be able to have the opportunity to work with David in
advocating for what he’s pushing for.
As for the Throne Speech, Mr. Speaker,
as throne speeches often are, they’re usually quite light on detail. There’s a
lot that we will be able to flesh out as legislation gets introduced: in
particular, the response to illicit drugs Act, the compassionate intervention
Act, two bills that were highlighted in the Throne Speech. We obviously don’t
know the details of that legislation yet, but we’ve laid out what our values
are and what we want to see for compassionate care in Saskatchewan, Mr.
Speaker. And my colleague, the member for Saskatoon Centre, very eloquently
laid that out in her Throne Speech response today, Mr. Speaker, and she’s done
a lot of work on that front.
One particular thing that I want to
highlight that we really want to see is that any measures that are implemented
are done on a not-for-profit basis. We do not want to see companies
capitalizing on the pain and the suffering of anyone in Saskatchewan, and
that’s a concern that we have. We want to make sure that this is done
thoughtfully and that this is done as a last resort, and that this is not done
on any sort of for-profit model, Mr. Speaker.
I wanted to talk a little bit about a
comprehensive domestic violence strategy. We did see the government announce
the cyberstalking and coercive control Act, Mr. Speaker, but we have the
highest rates of domestic violence in the province. When you talk with police,
they will tell you that that is one of their most frequent calls. It’s causing
a lot of backlog.
If you want to just talk about it from a
public safety standpoint, it’s a public safety issue. Not only is it an issue
that we should all be addressing in terms of women’s safety, but it’s eating up
a lot of police time frankly, Mr. Speaker. So not taking a preventative
approach to domestic violence is causing some problems in terms of being able
to allow police the opportunity to address other issues that people are
concerned about: drugs and gangs and guns, Mr. Speaker. They’re busy attending
domestic violence calls.
So a comprehensive domestic violence
strategy is something that we’ve been calling for, and stakeholders have been
calling for, for years now. It’s something that we’ve seen be created in
Ontario, and Ontario’s one of the few provinces that’s actually been able to
reduce their numbers.
I know this is an issue that’s not
partisan. I know colleagues on the other side have talked about this issue as
well. We’ve had the benefit of getting to work . . . I’m old enough
to remember times when we’ve worked together on this issue and feel confident
that we’ll be able to work on this issue again.
I know I have used up my time, Mr.
Speaker, but very grateful for the Deputy Whip’s indulgence. I am not going to
be supporting the motion for the Throne Speech, but I will be supporting the
amendment from my colleague, the member from Cumberland. Thank you.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Moosomin-Montmartre.
Kevin Weedmark: —
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And as I rise to respond to the Throne Speech, I’m
going to do three things at once here. I’ll focus on the Throne Speech, but
also, since it’s 364 days since the election on October 28th last year that
brought all of us here to this Assembly, I’ll reflect on what I’ve learned over
the last year. And since it’s the first time I’ve spoken in the legislature
since the spring session, I’m going to do something that I first did in grade 2
and recount what I did on my summer holidays.
But first I have to thank a few people.
All of us in this Assembly are able to do what we do because we have so many
amazing people behind the scenes supporting us, doing the research, doing the
follow-up, and more often than not, keeping us grounded.
[20:45]
So first of all, I want to thank all the
staff in the building for all they do to support all of us, Gene and the staff
in the caucus office for the incredible work that they do for us. And there’s
lots of people who help me by supporting me back home. In my role I’m away from
the riding a lot, and I couldn’t do what I do without having rock-solid support
from Charlene in the constituency office. She does an amazing job and I don’t
thank her enough for that.
And, Mr. Speaker, when I took on this
role, I left a large and growing business behind, and I have to say a huge,
huge, penultimate, gigantic thank you to Kara. She keeps things going back home
in our business. It’s still growing. I think she’s running it quite a bit
better than I did. In addition to running the business, of course, Kara is also
the love of my life and the inspiration for everything I do. So I have to say
. . . thank her for everything.
And, Mr. Speaker, most importantly I
thank the people of Moosomin-Montmartre for putting their trust in me. It is
truly an honour to represent them, and I work hard every day to live up to
their expectations.
Mr. Speaker, it’s been an incredible
year and I’ve learned so much from all of my colleagues. I’ve learned so much
at every event and every facility I’ve been to. On the health file, I’ve
learned so much from the Minister of Health and the Minister of Rural and
Remote Health. I’ve learned so much from the Premier, who came out to Moosomin
recently, to Moosomin-Montmartre, and met with lots of people around the
constituency. And from him I’ve learned what true leadership really looks like.
And the one thing that I keep learning
every day, especially on the health file, is that I’ve still got a lot to
learn. I come away from every event knowing more than when I went there, and
appreciating the work of so many people and organizations.
Just for one example, I had the
privilege a month or so ago of speaking at the Suicide Awareness Day event
hosted by Caring Hearts in Regina. I met with dozen of groups around the
province. And so many of those groups like Caring Hearts, which provides grief
counselling and suicide prevention work, are doing just amazing work that
changes people’s lives.
And there’ve been so many fun events as
well where I’ve had fun as well as learning a lot. A couple of weeks back, I
got to speak at the KidSport gala here in Regina.
That was an amazing event that honoured some of the volunteers who make that
program operate in communities right across the province. I was happy to be
there at the KidSport gala because I recognize that
sport teaches our kids some of the best lessons in life: how to work together,
how to win graciously, and how to lose with dignity. And, Mr. Speaker, I know a
few politicians of all stripes who are still working on that last one.
Over the summer I spoke at the
Whitewood-Chacachas Rodeo. Chief Charlie Bear of Chacachas, he’s a former competitive bull rider. He was
there and Chief Shelley Bear of Ochapowace was there. Chief Shelley and I were
speaking at the beginning of the rodeo, and we rode out into the arena in the
back of a pickup truck. I told Chief Charlie afterwards how much I admire him
for being able to stay on the back of a bull for eight seconds so many times,
because Chief Shelley and myself barely could stay in the back of that pickup
truck for eight seconds. We almost got bucked out of the pickup truck as we
were riding into the arena.
So, Mr. Speaker, back in grade 2 when I
spoke on what I did on my summer holidays, I spoke about going to parades,
going to fairs, going to festivals, pancake breakfasts, rodeos, hanging out at
the pool. Well, Mr. Speaker, now that I’m all grown up and I look back at what
I did on my summer holidays this year as I went around the riding, I went to
parades, I went to fairs, I went to festivals, pancake breakfasts, rodeos, and
enjoyed hanging out at the pool when I got to speak at the opening of the new pool
and waterslides at Kemoca Regional Park. And I loved
every minute of it.
Mr. Speaker, as outlined in the Speech
from the Throne, we are working to ensure that Saskatchewan’s economy remains
strong, our communities are safe, and our future is secure. Saskatchewan has
the strongest economy in Canada, and our goal is to ensure that our economy
remains strong and growing. We’ll also work to ensure that Saskatchewan remains
the most affordable place to live in Canada, our communities are safe, our
students are getting their best start, and that our health care system is
giving everyone the care they need.
And as I’ve travelled across the
province, I’ve seen so many examples of just why this province is so
exceptional. I’ve been inspired by visits to so many communities. In my
previous career I was at Kahkewistahaw First Nation many times, helping tell
their story as they worked on economic development and trying to build a bright
future for their nation. This summer I was there for the Kahkewistahaw Powwow.
I was there a couple of weeks ago when my friend Chief Evan Taypotat
was named Honorary Colonel of the Snowbirds.
And, Mr. Speaker, it was such an honour
to be at Kahkewistahaw for two announcements a few weeks back. First I spoke on
behalf of our government at the opening of a new training initiative that’s
taking place in partnership with Kahkewistahaw and with SIIT
[Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies], supported by our government.
And that same day it was such an honour
to speak on behalf of our government as we designated Highway 201 from the
Trans-Canada Highway to the Qu’Appelle Valley as Chief Kahkewistahaw Way.
Highway 201 is now the third highway in Saskatchewan named after an Indigenous
leader and will forever be known as Chief Kahkewistahaw Way. I know how
important this was to the people of Kahkewistahaw, and I was proud to be part
of that announcement.
I was also fortunate to visit White Bear
First Nations this summer. I’ve always been inspired by the leadership at White
Bear. I was there in the golf clubhouse many, many years ago when they first
set up a casino, asserting their rights and helping them tell their story.
This summer I was there. I got to speak
at the opening of a new splash park on White Bear that our government helped
fund. And I was also very honoured that Chief Jonathan Pasap, who I’ve known
for many years, invited me to be part of their celebration of the 150th
anniversary of entering Treaty 4. And I was so happy to be there for that
important event.
Now, Mr. Speaker, in the Speech from the
Throne, it was emphasized that we’re building a strong, safe, secure
Saskatchewan. And I see that every day as I travel around the province. One of
the most rewarding parts of my role as Legislative Secretary to the Ministers
of Health is seeing the impact of some of the programs in health care. I’ve had
so many opportunities to learn and, in so many health care facilities from one
side of the province to the other, met so many amazing front-line health care
workers. And I’m always inspired by their dedication when I get to meet with
them and talk to them.
And Moosomin is home to the South East
family medicine residency program, and I see the difference that it’s making in
southeast Saskatchewan. It was wonderful to have the Premier visit my riding
this summer and meet with Dr. Cara Fallis in Whitewood, who’s serving patients
in the area after completing her residency in Moosomin.
And it was great to be in Yorkton this
summer when we announced there would be a new family medicine residency program
to serve the communities of Yorkton, Tisdale, and Melfort. Dr. Fallis was one
of the first graduates of that new program in Moosomin, and she’s a wonderful
example of exactly what can happen with that program as she, her family, and
even her parents from Toronto are all making our community their home. And
she’s become an important part of our local medical community.
I like to promote that residency program
whenever I can. So a few weeks ago I had the chance to speak at the White Coat
Ceremony for the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine. 120 students
of the class of 2029 received their white coats that day, signalling the start
of their transition from medical students to eventually becoming doctors.
Dr. Fallis sent me a text that morning
and asked me to put in a plug for the South East program, and I did. I spoke
about the bright future ahead for these students. I spoke about all the
opportunities for them in Saskatchewan, and I mentioned that there is a program
in southeast Saskatchewan providing residency training in family medicine.
And, Mr. Speaker, following that
ceremony, one of the students came up to me, a young woman from east central
Saskatchewan, and told me that she’d been considering medicine for a long time.
But she loves the region she’s from, and the idea of doing undergrad, then med
school, then residency all in the city far from home was a little bit too much
time away. So she opted for a different career path, that is, until the South
East family medicine residency program got started.
She told me that when she saw that that
program was starting in Moosomin and that she could do her residency in the
region that she loves, she decided that she would go into medicine. And that
day, Mr. Speaker, she was one of those students who received her white coat as
part of the class of 2029. What a testament to how successful a program is,
when not only is it training people who are staying in the local area but it’s
actually getting people to go into that profession who might not have
otherwise.
And all around this province I see the
efforts to improve health care. I’ve toured the breast health centre in Regina,
and when I spoke at the breast reconstruction awareness event, I heard from
many women about what a difference the breast health centre is making for
patients.
This summer we celebrated the first year
of the Regina Urgent Care Centre, which has seen more than 41,000 patients, and
I was in Saskatoon as we marked progress on the urgent care centre there. And
while planning is under way for a large, new long-term care facility in Regina,
in my own riding we have a new 33‑bed long-term care facility under
construction. Those 33 beds are going to serve the needs of southeast
Saskatchewan for decades to come.
And as the Throne Speech emphasized,
we’re working to ensure Saskatchewan’s economy remains strong, our communities
are safe, and our future is secure. Some steps on the way are the response to
illicit drugs Act, which will take action to protect families and communities
from illegal drugs and crack down on those who profit from them, and the
compassionate intervention Act, which will require people whose addictions are
posing a threat to themselves and others to get the care they need.
And, Mr. Speaker, some of the guests
that I had with me from Moosomin-Montmartre at the Throne Speech last week were
there to hear about these commitments. From Ochapowace First Nation, I had
Chief Shelley Bear and Headwoman Audrey Isaac. Chief Bear tells me that she
believes the compassionate intervention Act will literally save lives, and she
welcomes the difference this will make.
So I was proud to have Chief Bear here
for the Throne Speech to hear that commitment to the compassionate intervention
Act.
Also with the Throne Speech, from
Moosomin, I had Bonnie McTavish. She has advocated for compassionate
intervention because she’s seen lives cut short because of addiction. She had a
loved one in the throes of addiction, and she came to me and told me that she
was terrified he was going to lose his life to addiction if he didn’t get the
help he needed.
But he wasn’t willing to undergo
treatment. She worked with the police; they got mental health warrants. She
entered trap houses to find him here in Regina, trying to get him the help he
needed. Nothing was working, and there was no legal avenue to get him the help
he needed.
She told me when she spoke to me a while
ago that what Saskatchewan needs is a form of compassionate intervention
because in her opinion it was a matter of life and death. Mr. Speaker, her
loved one was able to get the help he needed, but she fears for others and
doesn’t want anyone else to go through what she went through.
She was here in this Chamber Wednesday,
and I watched as she teared up as the commitment to the compassionate
intervention Act was read in the Throne Speech. After the Throne Speech she
told me . . . And I’m going to quote her words directly. She said:
It was a huge
emotional relief to hear that this law is coming. I can’t imagine how many
families out there, this might be their answer. This might be their last hope
to get a family member into treatment. It’s going to be life-saving.
Still quoting her:
I’m really happy to
hear that someone is saying that this is enough. We’ve had some wins since I
came to you, but I also know a lot of people that didn’t have wins. In that
time, two of my son’s close friends overdosed. I can’t think of a worse thing
for a parent to go through than losing a child.
Bonnie did everything she could to save
her loved one from addiction, and for people like her I am proud that our
government is listening and responding.
Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of
important issues in this Throne Speech, but for people like Chief Shelley Bear,
for people like Bonnie McTavish, there is nothing more important than the
commitment to the compassionate intervention Act. Providing those in the throes
of addiction more drugs will not help. Providing a crack pipe or a needle will
not help. Leaving vulnerable people on the streets will not help. The
compassionate intervention Act will help by getting people with addictions in
extreme circumstances the help they need.
So for every community leader, every
parent, every mother who has seen the ravages of addiction, the compassionate
intervention Act will make a difference, making our lives safer and more
secure.
[21:00]
Mr. Speaker, I’m proud of this and so
many initiatives in the Throne Speech, and I’m proud to be part of a government
that is building a strong, safe, and secure Saskatchewan. And for that reason,
I will be supporting the motion moved by the member from Weyburn-Bengough and
seconded by the member from Carrot River Valley, and I will not be supporting
the amendment. Thank you.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Regina Walsh Acres.
Jared Clarke: — Mr. Speaker, it’s
an honour to be on my feet here this evening to enter into debate on my
response to the Throne Speech.
As I will begin tonight, I just want to
say a big thank you to my constituency, Regina Walsh Acres. As the member in
front of me from Saskatoon Meewasin said, it was his
three-year anniversary. August 10th was my two-year anniversary of being a MLA,
and so it is with great privilege and honour that I get to stand here and enter
into debate.
I, over the last two years, have had an
immense privilege to get to know so many of the folks in my constituency, to
hear their successes, to hear their struggles, to hear their ideas, and to see
them work together as a community. I try and get out to all of the community
events in Regina Walsh Acres as I can. One of the organizations — the Regent
Park Community Association, Normanview Residents
Group — they put on a number of different events during the summer like a
barbecue, like a community cleanup. And it’s just amazing to get to work with
those folks that have great pride in their community, great pride in their
neighbourhood, and work so hard to make sure it is a welcoming, inclusive, and
vibrant part of Regina. And so to them, I just want to say thank you for
putting your faith in me to represent you here in this building.
Over the summer we did a lot of
outreach, hosted our annual barbecue in Regina Walsh Acres. We did a lot of
door knocking. Like I said, we attended a lot of events in the community: the
trade show, community cleanups, all sorts of opportunities. I went to a number
of grade 8 grads. And, yeah, it was a really good summer of connecting with
folks in the community.
I also want to say thank you to the
incredible team that I get to serve with here in the Chamber. I had the
privilege to be a MLA a year before the fall election in 2024, when there were
just 13 of us, and then after this election with 27 members on this side of the
Chamber. I have been continually inspired and grateful that I get to work with
such thoughtful, caring people who are here, that do such good work in
communities in their own constituencies but across this province, and work so
hard to represent those people, to bring ideas and solutions, and to offer
feedback to the government on where we hear from folks and where we feel
government needs correction on.
And so I just want to say that I’m
really proud to be part of this team and have been so grateful to develop great
relationships with so many of my colleagues here. I do want to single out my
colleague from Cumberland, as many other of my folks here on this side have
done so far. I want just to share my utmost respect for his speech that he
opened our side’s response to the Throne Speech with. Well one, I’m deeply
touched by his experience of what his family and his community and what he went
through as a leader in the North this summer.
I had the opportunity to drive up to La
Ronge, up to Missinipe this summer in July, after all
of the communities that had been evacuated in May and June had been able to
return to their homes. And I got to see first-hand the devastation of those
fires, and to drive for miles and miles through just charred forest was
jarring.
And to imagine what so many of the
people of the North had to go through to drive through that fire, and to hear
my colleague talk about, you know, wondering whether he was going to survive
that trip down through the fire, I just have been in awe of him this summer and
how he’s represented his community and the people that he works for. And also
the MLA for Athabasca as well. Both just outstanding leaders in the North, and
again grateful to be able to work with them.
Also in our office Bre, Nadine, and
Trish, just also continuing that high work ethic, making sure that they’re
getting their job done and working for the people of north Regina. Shout-out to
my constituency executive, Regina Walsh Acres constituency executive. They
support me through all of this and put in a lot of volunteer hours to make sure
that, you know, we’re getting ready for the election in 2028 and making sure
that we are out doing the work, connecting with folks in the community, and all
of those things. So to my team on the executive I want to say, thank you.
And lastly I’ll just mention my family.
And I just want to say just how proud I am of them and how grateful I am that
they allow me to do the work here in this building. And it takes a toll on the
family, for sure, and especially with what my family went through a year ago
today. It’s still challenging and there’s still repercussions from that that we
deal with. But I just want to say that I’m very, very proud of them. And that
extends to the rest of my family as well — my sisters and mom and dad and brother-in-laws and in-laws who, you know, put in a lot of
effort to make sure that I can be here as well. So I want to say thank you to
all of my family.
Mr. Speaker, I was a teacher before I
got elected, and I deeply believed that each one of my students deserved to get
a good education, to have a chance to dream about what they could be and work
towards a life that they could be proud of. As an MLA I bring that same core
value of believing that each person I represent in Regina Walsh Acres and in
this amazing province is worthy of a fair chance in life, that government’s
role is to deliver essential services that should be there for people.
That’s why I believe it is not a radical
idea that people should get high-quality, free, public health care. That’s why
I believe it is not a radical idea that people should be able to make enough
money to put food on their table and make ends meet, that it is not a radical
idea for our children to get a high-quality education. And it’s not a radical
idea that when workers thrive, our province thrives. It is not a radical idea,
Mr. Speaker, to feel safe in your home, in your neighbourhood, or in your community.
And it is not a radical idea to care about the environment and make sure that
we leave this world better for our kids.
These are all ideas I think Saskatchewan
people deserve, and as long as I am an MLA in this House I will work towards
those ideas. A student once gave me a water bottle that they had inscribed a
quote on, and I recently pulled it out of my cupboard and had a look at it. The
quote read, “Courage, my friends. ’Tis not too late to build a better world.”
So with that, let’s dig into this Throne
Speech because there’s a lot to talk about, and I know I don’t have a lot of
time left. But I’ve talked a little bit about the wildfires in the North, and I
want to just take a moment as the Environment shadow minister for our team to
just talk about . . . We’ve talked a lot about the response. We’ve
talked about some of the issues around the water bombers not being in the air
providing that support.
But I want to talk about the link
between climate change and the wildfires that we are seeing. And for decades
scientists have been predicting that as global temperatures rise, we will see
an increase in the severity of forest fires, amongst many other impacts. And in
Saskatchewan we’re seeing increased drought, increased flooding events, extreme
weather.
And we know that climate change disrupts
normal weather patterns that we are used to in this province and particularly
in the North, which means that the forest can be drier, the days and the nights
during the spring and summer can be hotter. And the forest is then
supercharged, so that when a fire does occur it is bigger and more significant.
So when a fire does start, it is hotter, it moves faster, and it burns deeper
and longer. And this is a direct result of climate change.
And when we talk about the issues around
the fires that we’ve seen around La Ronge, you talk to those folks and they
just experienced another extreme fire just 10 years prior. So we are seeing
these fires become increasingly . . . they are increasing. We are in
a situation where this is unprecedented. This year we had 30 communities
evacuated at the same time.
My colleague from Cumberland talked
about how 15,000 people in his constituency were evacuated at one moment. And
we heard first-hand accounts from volunteer forest fire fighters that are in
the North, and they’ve been battling wildfires for decades. And they talked
about how these fires this year behaved differently. They burned hotter. They
moved faster. And we saw the consequences of that in the many communities
across the North.
Now even though some of these forest
fires were started by humans, whether intentionally or by accident, climate
change still had an impact on how fast these fires spread and how large these
fires became. And this is the piece: we know as temperatures increase over
time, that these fires are going to become more and more common. And they’re
going to get hotter and larger and impact northern Saskatchewan more and more.
This government needs to have a plan on
how we are going to fight these forest fires in the future, because just
because it happened this year does not mean it’s a free pass next year. So we
need a plan. And that is why we have called for a comprehensive public inquiry
led by an independent judge into the entire wildfire disaster that destroyed
homes in the North. We need to be prepared for the next time this happens. And
I hope that the government will hear that, that they will be prepared and they
will plan going into next fire season.
I also serve as our team’s rural and
remote shadow Health minister, and so I’m going to dive into a few pieces on
the health front. A quote from the Throne Speech: “Saskatchewan’s health care
system is ensuring everyone gets the care they need.” That’s a bold statement,
Mr. Speaker. And I hear, you know, members on the other side of the House talk
about, they’re glass half full and we’re glass half empty. But when you have
the facts that I’m going to talk about here in terms of the state of our health
care system, it’s hard to imagine being a glass-half-full person when, you
know, we’ve seen an eightfold increase in hospital disruptions over the time
that this Premier has been in his seat.
We’ve seen hospitals, closed hospitals
in rural Saskatchewan that have a piece of paper on their front door so when
people drive up, they find that their hospital is closed, directing them to
another hospital. They drive to that other hospital and that hospital is also
closed. That is a problem, Mr. Speaker. That is not health care ensuring
everyone gets the care that they need.
When you have 450 health care workers
sending a letter, a public letter to the Health minister begging for help about
the conditions that are in the Royal University Hospital’s ER, that is not
health care that is ensuring everyone gets the care that they need. When you
have bed after bed lined in the hallway and people having to be there for days
in the hallway getting their care when . . . In question period last
Thursday, I talked about a gentleman who estimated he had 2,000 people go by
him in the two days that he was in the hallway. That is not health care that is
ensuring everyone gets the care that they need.
[21:15]
I could talk about the AIMS
[administrative information management system] IT [information technology]
issues that we’re seeing in the former Cypress Hills region, where health care
workers are not getting paid properly for the time that they have put in. I
think a basic expectation of workers in this province is if you work a certain
amount of hours, you should be paid for the hours that you’ve worked. I don’t
think that’s unreasonable.
And one of the things . . .
And this really struck me, Mr. Speaker. And I’m getting close to my time
already. But I’ve been attending a number of health care rallies over the
summer. And one of the sentiments that I hear from health care workers, health
care workers who haven’t had a deal, a collective bargaining agreement for two
and a half years, who haven’t had a raise in three years, who I feel in my
conversations talking with them are holding on by a thread and staying in their
job but they tell me that they no longer tell their kids to go into health care
as a profession. They are actively telling them, don’t go into health care
because it is too hard; the conditions are too bad; we’re not paid for what we
do.
I think that’s a testament to the state
of our health care system. And I think that should be a wake-up call to the
government to hear those front-line health care workers that are saying that.
And I encourage this government to hear those workers, to work with front-line
health care workers to deliver.
There’s a few things in the Throne
Speech that aren’t there. One, a hospital for Yorkton. I really thought that
was going to be there. I’ve toured the Yorkton hospital this summer, about a
month ago now, and the conditions in that hospital are a bit shocking frankly.
There are great health care workers doing amazing work in there, but when you
have, you know, no hot water in the maternity ward for women giving birth,
that’s unacceptable to me.
When you have . . . The air
conditioning needs to be run in certain wings of the acute care wing during the
winter. They need to run the air conditioning because the boiler makes it too
hot in those rooms, and their people are just overheating. And on the other
side, in the summer it gets too hot, so they’re having to put in a ton more air
conditioning that are just those little like window air conditioners. The ER is
too small.
The list is quite shocking as to what
the state of care in that hospital is. Or sorry, not the state of care but
rather the state of the facility. Again I say the care that health care workers
are providing is exceptional, exceptional. However they need the facility to
meet the demands of a growing community.
We don’t see any solutions to fixing ERs. We don’t see a deal for health care workers.
The last thing I’m going to say, Mr.
Speaker, is on the urgent care centres. You know, we see this government
championing urgent care centres as taking the pressure off our busy emergency
rooms. But here in Regina we have the urgent care centre already in place. It
still is not functioning at full capacity; it is still not operating 24 hours,
7 days a week, as was promised in the election. And we’ve heard from the
minister that that is not going to be happening any time soon.
But what I’ve heard from the urgent care
centre is that the existing emergency docs from the General and the Pasqua are
the ones who are manning the urgent care centre. So instead of just having the
emergency docs covering those two hospitals, they’re now covering a third
hospital. And we’re not staffing that at full capacity yet.
So now we’re going to build a second
urgent care centre in Regina. We’re going build another urgent care centre in
Saskatoon. All of these things, how are we going to staff them? We can build
buildings but we need to staff these buildings. That seems to be something that
the government doesn’t seem concerned about.
I had a lot more that I wanted to say,
Mr. Speaker, and I’m getting the hook because I’ve already gone two, three
minutes over my time. But I want to just say that I’m very proud to be from
Saskatchewan. This is an amazing province. And one of the best parts of this
job I think is getting to travel across the province and meet amazing
Saskatchewan people doing amazing things. And I am continually inspired by
Saskatchewan people, proud to work for them, proud to do this work here in this
legislature.
With that, I will not be supporting this
Throne Speech, instead will be voting in favour of the amendment put forward by
my colleague, the member from Cumberland, and seconded by the member from
Saskatoon Chief Mistawasis. Thank you.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the Minister of Parks, Culture and Sport.
Hon. Alana
Ross: —
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is an honour for me to rise in this House
today to speak to the Speech from the Throne for 2025. But like everyone else
has done, there are some people in my life that are very important to me and
I’d really like to recognize them tonight, starting with my family.
And our family was blessed with a new
little boy. My youngest son and his wife have a little baby boy as well who is
just over two months old whose name is Stetson. And I always say just think of
the name — and I could show you pictures of what he wears — the little guy has
no option but to be a cowboy. But I think he’ll do very fine.
I have some wonderful people who help me
up in the Prince Albert office. I have my veteran CA, Patt, who is still
working a bit part-time for me. She’s doing some media posts. She attends
events with me when I’m up there.
And my new CA, Lisa, has stepped right
up, and it’s like she’s been there forever. She’s doing an amazing job. She
establishes a very good rapport when she’s doing casework; she’s prompt at
follow-up. So I really appreciate the fact that I have these two amazing ladies
to support me in Prince Albert. And I should mention, Lisa’s also likes to do a
bit of interior decorating. My office looks better than it has in five years,
so I’m very happy for that because that’s not my strength.
And I’m very blessed to be the Minister
of Parks, Culture and Sport, and my office staff here are phenomenal. I could
not do any of this without them. My chief of staff, Elias, he’s just a wealth
of knowledge. He’s high energy, a workaholic, I think. I have a young man,
Josh, who is my MA [ministerial assistant] of communication. And he’s really,
he’s come a long ways. He has learned what that role is, and he’s doing an
amazing job.
We have a new MA of casework. And we
started out we had Pooja, and she left me to go help the Minister of Rural and
Remote Health in her busy office. And now we have Ayaz who is really picking up
and really contributing a lot to our office. And then we have Bonnie. Bonnie,
she’s the one in charge. She’s our senior admin, and she keeps all of us in
line, knowing where we’re going. She is a true sergeant major. And we were very
fortunate to have a new junior admin assistant come and join us, Danika, and I
see such promise in her as well. So I feel very blessed that I have these
wonderful people to support me while I’m here in Regina.
And of course the good people of Prince
Albert Northcote. I’ve always said I represent the northern part of the city of
Prince Albert. My condo is right along the river. We border the North
Saskatchewan River in my constituency. And these are just . . .
they’re good, hard-working people. You know, they’re very relatable. They’re
very honest with how they feel. And they really are there to work hard to
support their families. We’re so close to the lakes that that’s something that
people work to do, is to be able to go up and appreciate our beautiful lakes
during the summer. And I see that a lot with the people I’m very blessed to
represent, and I can’t thank them enough.
I was also at the Prince Albert Grand
Council assembly this morning — assembly of Nations. And we have quite a high
Indigenous population in Prince Albert, and again good, hard-working people.
They want what’s best for their families, their friends, just like we do. So we
have a great relationship. I met the new president of the Women’s Commission
today so we’re looking forward to future conversations.
And as we know — and most of us probably
haven’t seen times like we are seeing lately, maybe in our lifetimes — the
world today is pretty unpredictable. And we are very fortunate in Saskatchewan
that the strength of our economy allows us to weather this storm. Through all
of this, Saskatchewan still remains the most affordable place in Saskatchewan
to live, work, and raise a family.
And I had the pleasure of speaking with
the owners of a company that’s going to be relocating to Saskatchewan from
Ontario. And they are amazed at what we have. And he said, “I just know once we
go back and tell people what we’ve seen, there is going to be great interest in
coming to Saskatchewan to start a business, to get a profession.” So that was
very encouraging.
One of the reasons . . . like
we live right on the border. Our minerals and mining, our natural resources,
are very important to Saskatchewan. And where I live is kind of where that
starts, in the north part of the province, and it really does impact Prince
Albert as well. Many people who work in the resource sector live in Prince
Albert. They buy their homes in Prince Albert. And they fly up to the mines on
a regular basis to do their shifts and then come back, but they’re raising
their families in Prince Albert.
So just because you live in a city, it
doesn’t mean you don’t get direct impact from the resource sector. And it’s
also that having a strong economy and a thriving resource and ag sector has
also allowed us to fund projects. And Prince Albert has benefited greatly from
that.
I’m always excited when I go back and
see the progress on the new Victoria Hospital that’s being built. And you can
just hear the buzz in the community from people excited to see it’s above the
ground. People are so excited to see that progress. And it has done so much to
increase the morale of the staff to think that we are going to get this
state-of-the-art building in Saskatchewan.
We also have, when you look around the
city, we have, as the minister from Sask Rivers
mentioned, the Lake Country recreation centre. That’s not just a centre for
Prince Albert. When I was talking to people up in La Ronge, for example, they
were excited. There’s new restaurants in that area. There’s stores in that
area, hotels. They couldn’t wait for that to be finished so they could come
into Prince Albert for a weekend and have a holiday with their family. So it
has been a very positive asset to the city of Prince Albert.
There are a number of affordability
measures that our government has. You know, the students take advantage of the
graduate retention bonus; homeowners, the home renovation tax credit.
[21:30]
In the Ministry of Parks, Culture and
Sport, I’m very happy to say we have the active families benefit. And you know,
I met a lovely young lady when I was in Moose Jaw, and she was saying that she
applies for that every year because without that support, her kids couldn’t go
into the same type of program that she is able to put them in. So that is very,
very positive.
The ability to keep small-business tax
at 1 per cent, that supports all of our small business in the province. And I
know in Prince Albert, as I’ve seen here, there’s a lot of small businesses, so
not raising that tax has helped them significantly.
So safety is paramount and we’ve heard
that. We all need to feel safe and secure in our homes. We now have the
marshals service stationed in Prince Albert, and that has been a great asset to
the city of Prince Albert. And the increase in the municipal police force,
ongoing investment in the RCMP, all of those investments help make our
communities safer with the increased manpower to be able to do the policing.
And I have to say, I’m on kind of a main
street, and I have noticed it is a lot quieter when I go back to what it was
before. Because we get a lot of people with loud cars racing up and down the
street, and the last couple times I’ve been home, I haven’t noticed that, which
to me was very, very positive.
We also have a number of pieces of
legislation making Saskatchewan stronger, safer, and secure: the safe public
spaces Act, safe communities and neighbourhood Acts, and The Trespass to
Property Act, and several legislative and regulatory policies to protect
citizens of Saskatchewan against illicit drugs. And we’ve heard that in this
House already today. All of these support the people of Saskatchewan and help
get the drugs off the street and make our communities safer.
We’ve heard about the recovery-oriented
system of care. I had the privilege of going out to Alberta when they were
implementing that program and saw first-hand and heard first-hand the impact
that that has made on families, on individuals. And it was really hard not to
buy into that because they are doing such great work and they are helping so
many people.
The compassionate intervention Act. You
know, sometimes I think as a parent . . . And I was very blessed I
didn’t have issues with addictions with my kids. You know, we all have certain
challenges, but I feel so blessed that I didn’t have that. And I don’t know how
would I feel as a parent if someone said to me, all your child is worth is a
clean needle. I mean, harm reduction, we want our needles to be clean, but
people who are in that condition do not have the ability to make that decision
for themselves. I have also had the opportunity to speak with survivors who
have participated in that type of programming and are so grateful that someone
cared enough to implement that. So I thank our minister for that.
We also have the provincial approach to
homelessness that will be positively impacting Prince Albert; funding supports
for shelters, spaces, supporting housing units; continued work with community
leaders and the federal government on bail reforms.
There’s so much going on. When I sat and
listened to the Throne Speech, I was just, I was absolutely amazed. Like you
get caught up in doing the work, but when it’s laid out as to how much is
actually happening and how positive it is, our Throne Speech really, really
spells that out.
Inter-jurisdictional support orders Act
will ensure that support orders can be enforced when a parent leaves the
province. That is a very positive step. I had a young woman I actually knew
when she was growing up come into my office not long before this was
introduced. And she was looking for that because there weren’t many tools that
they could utilize when a spouse leaves and doesn’t provide any type of
supports for their children. So that will be very, very well received.
So within my ministry, the Ministry of
Parks, Culture and Sport, we also have some initiatives. There were over 930
visits to the Saskatchewan provincial parks as you heard. I had never been to a
southern provincial park when I took on this role. Now I have been to a number
of them. And people love the parks. The people of Saskatchewan love the parks.
It is a very important asset, and we have done some investment in the parks
with our facilities and keeping them up to date. And that’s very important because
that’s a real outlet for a lot of our people, to be able to utilize the parks.
Another initiative we have in our office
is the from many peoples, strength Act. We’ve had many cultural groups reach
out to us to talk about permanent legislation, so I have had the privilege to
meet with a number of these organizations. So this is something that we will be
introducing this session as well.
I just want to speak to the Status of
Women file. The Status of Women file leads and coordinates the development of
strategic initiatives and public policy through their program. We work with
other ministries in order to do this. The Ministry of Justice is one of our
major partners. They’re the ones who actually are . . . That program
is funded and it is set up through the different ministries.
Interpersonal violence is deeply rooted.
It has devastating impact on many people, and it requires a multi-faceted
approach and commitment from everyone. So that is something we will be
continuing to work on.
So, Mr. Speaker, thank you for the
opportunity to speak in this House today. I will be supporting the Speech from
the Throne as moved by the member from Weyburn-Bengough and seconded by the
member from Carrot River Valley. I will not be supporting the amendment. Thank
you.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Regina University.
Sally Housser: —
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I couldn’t be happier tonight to be rising in
the coveted 9:30, bottom-of-the-ninth slot for responding to the Throne Speech.
But I do rise today with the extreme honour and privilege of responding to the
Speech from the Throne on behalf of the constituents of Regina University.
I’d like to recognize right from the
beginning the great work of my constituency assistant, Daisy Bowman. She is new
like I am new, and together we have been learning. But she has done a fantastic
job of serving the constituents of Regina University. Her compassion, her
thoughtfulness, her commitment to helping the people of our riding has been
unprecedented. She’s also an absolute star in organization and keeping me where
I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be, and making sure that I’m connecting
with all the people in the riding every chance that I get.
I’d also like to thank our caucus staff
who have worked non-stop over the course of the legislative break, ensuring
that we’re bringing the concerns of the province to the public eye through
daily — often multiple daily — press conferences. And they’ve also kept all of
these opposition MLAs here running to all four corners of the province, meeting
with stakeholders, municipal leaders, and citizens across Saskatchewan.
I would really specifically like to
thank, though, my colleagues from Cumberland and Athabasca and their
constituency assistants for their work over the course of this summer. They
worked through the nights, 24 hours a day, while dealing with their own struggles
and their families, to keep the communities and the people they represent safe
through tragedy after tragedy.
During my first summer as a provincial
MLA, it was a total delight to attend so many vibrant community events in my
riding in Regina and all across the province. There is so much going on, and so
many people who work so hard and volunteer hours to organize these fabulous and
dynamic community events.
I got to experience the excitement of
the Dragon Boat Festival at Wascana Lake as the association prepares to host
the world next year for an international dragon boat competition. I nearly had
to be rolled out of the VicSquare parking lot after
being stuffed to the gills with some of the best food this province has to
offer at the Taste of the Philippines festival which occurs in my riding. I got
to indulge in my love of bagpipes and a good bit of caber tossing during the
Highland games. And probably a highlight of the year was getting to attend the
Back to Batoche festival, where we were treated to fabulous jigging and, of
course, an incredible fish fry.
And now that’s only a fraction of the
amazing community events that I got to attend since last we met in this
Chamber. Unfortunately, to name them all would take my entire allotted time,
and I very much do want to get to the well-deserved criticisms of the Throne
Speech itself. But before I do, I do want to outline where those criticisms are
coming from.
In addition to the great community
events, I’ve met with dozens and dozens of stakeholders and hundreds and
hundreds of constituents and many municipal leaders from Yorkton, Prince Albert,
Moose Jaw, Weyburn, Estevan. And in my capacity as shadow minister for Energy
and Resources, myself, my colleague for Saskatoon Riversdale, and our leader,
Carla Beck, had an extremely productive tour of Calgary just at the end of last
session where we met with senior leaders for many of the largest oil and gas
producers, energy producers, as well as industry associations.
And the message from them was very
clear. There’s a reset with this new federal government and there is a
willingness to work. And there’s a willingness to give a benefit of the doubt.
And obviously people have been burned over the past 10 years in the energy
industry with the previous federal administration, but people know we need to
get the job done. We need to diversify. And in order to be able to do that, we
need to start building now.
The past six months have very much been
shadowed by the volatile, nonsensical tariff roller coaster that President
Trump has kept us on. But the one thing that has been consistent is that the
president does not respond to a softly, softly, playing-nice approach that this
government seems to favour. What is clear is that if he is given an inch, he
will take a mile. Bullies respond to strength, and that is the strength that we
have to demonstrate here in Saskatchewan and across Canada.
And in this climate, it really was
fortuitous to have this year’s midwestern legislators’ conference here in
Saskatchewan. I was fortunate enough to tour the Cenovus operations in
Lloydminster and watch in real time as United States legislators learn and see
that 70 per cent of the heavy crude that they refine in their states comes from
Canada. And it’s imperative that Saskatchewan and Canada continues to tell our
story south of the border so that the people in the United States know that
these unjust tariffs are costing jobs and hurting livelihoods in their country
as well.
I’ve also had the . . . And
this is something that is great as a new MLA and definitely in the portfolio
that I get to have. I got to do some incredible tours of the major operations
we have in this province and get to meet so many of the workers that keep this
province running. I toured both the solution mine at Bethune for potash and the
conventional underground mine at Esterhazy, which is an incredible experience,
and to get to meet all the people and see the massive operation and see the product
that is so critical to our province’s economy from start to finish. And the
pride that the workers take in building this province is really something
incredible, and those good jobs that they want for themselves, but that they
want for their children as well.
[21:45]
And recently I visited the great
Saskatchewan success story of Supreme Steel in Saskatoon. It’s absolutely the
type of local company that has the ability to build this province. They do
roads. They do bridges. They do refineries. They do mining headframes. And they
just need to get Saskatchewan contracts instead of those contracts going out of
province or south of the border.
I also met with many of the unions who
represent our workers in industry and across the building trades. And while
there’s an excitement for the potential we have in this province, there’s also
a fear. And this was something in all the people that I have met with in the
energy and resources portfolio — industry, labour, First Nations, chambers of
commerce, municipal leaders — concerns for the growing labour force gap.
We need to build more rail lines, more
pipelines, more transmission lines, and modernize our roads and highways. But
the thing that’s been consistent across all those conversations we have is the
worry that we simply don’t have enough people now to build, let alone what we
plan to.
We need to have practical, achievable
solutions for how we address the labour force gap. The number of retiring
people in the building trades now should be worrying to everybody involved. And
obviously getting our young people involved in those very critical good jobs,
good-paying jobs, mortgage-paying jobs, needs to be a priority, and
unfortunately I didn’t hear any of that in the Throne Speech.
But perhaps the best way to talk about
this Throne Speech is to talk about what I heard across hundreds of households
throughout this summer and how little this document had to offer those folks. A
Throne Speech never comes with specifics — we all understand that — but what we
do hope to see as we begin a legislative session is a document that sets out a
vision, priorities, or at the very least a base understanding of what the
people of the province are facing. The speech unfortunately accomplished none
of that.
The absolute disconnect of the
government continuing to insist that life in Saskatchewan couldn’t be rosier
when the economic anxiety, the crumbling health care system, and our
skyrocketing rates of crime and drug overdoses tell the real story. This Throne
Speech is completely divorced from the reality that the people of Saskatchewan
are facing. It is devoid of innovative thinking, of curiosity, and of
compassion. It says that black is white, up is down, and demands that the
people of Saskatchewan not believe their eyes or ears, or more importantly,
their wallets.
They are putting patting themselves on
the back for utter mediocrity over taking real action for the people they
represent. And in a moment that perhaps defines this government more than
anything else — it came just after the Throne Speech — they took a very
non-partisan motion by our leader, Carla
Beck, about standing up for canola producers and turned it into such an
exercise in sycophantic back slapping that it would make even the most ardent
dictator blush.
Mr. Speaker, in the hundreds of doors I
knocked on over this summer, there wasn’t one person — even among the people,
and there were the people, who told me they didn’t vote for me — there was not
one person ready to defend this government record, even people who said they’d
been Sask Party voters their entire life.
The most common thing . . .
Well actually the most common thing I heard was that it was the first time
they’d ever had a politician knock on their door in between election cycles,
which is always delightful to hear. But the next-most-common thing I heard was
about the economic anxiety that people are facing. And the great constituency
of Regina University is a fairly affluent — by the province’s standards — a
fairly affluent riding or at least comfortably middle class.
Today I had a constituent join me, Roger
Derby, who is a senior who’s worked hard his whole life to build the province
of Saskatchewan, and he is worried about losing his home because he simply
cannot afford to live there anymore. And that is the same fear that every
single one of his neighbours in that same building feels. And you cannot say to
them, well just find somewhere cheaper. There is nowhere down the line. The
wait for affordable housing, there is nowhere to go, Mr. Speaker, and there are
so many people that do not have family to look after them.
And the anxiety that I spoke to, that I
heard from so many homeowners, people who had their house, still had some time
left on the mortgage and they’re just getting into retirement. They’ve done
everything right. They’ve done everything right in their lives, and this should
be the time that maybe they get to travel a bit, get to visit their kids. But
no, instead they have to be thinking about their parents moving back into their
house and also their children not being able to move out. And then the cost and
stress of that on a single household is too much to bear for many, many people.
The other thing that was incredibly
consistent was the state of our health care system. I think probably every
second house I hit had some kind of tragedy or horror story that stemmed from a
lack of care, a surgical wait time, a lack of diagnostics. And every single one
of these people talked about the commitment of the health care workers that
served them and the sadness they felt as they themselves were dealing with all
of this but watching the health care workers trying to help them, who were so
burnt-out, so tired, and so wanting to help and do better but just being
crushed under the weight of a system that simply isn’t supporting not only the
patients but the workers that provide that care, Mr. Speaker.
The other thing — and again, in a fairly
middle class and kind of half-suburban neighbourhood — is public safety. People
are really starting to not feel safe in their own homes. And they’re
sympathetic. We can all understand the root causes of crime and why it’s there,
but that does not remove the anxiety and the fear that you face in protecting
your own home.
And the one thing that I think people
. . . It was consistent. You know, they say, we just never see cops
around here, and if somebody’s breaking into my garage or stealing a bike or
something like that, by the time you call somebody, they’re acting as EMTs
[emergency medical technician] dealing with the drug crisis downtown.
And I’m getting the hook here from our
Whip. But the one thing with the drug crisis . . . And we can talk
about all sorts of different types of care, but the one thing we need to say is
that when somebody in the throes of addiction puts up their hand and says, “I
need help,” then the government should be there saying, “we will give you that
help,” and not waiting for beds to come online, not having to call back a line,
not being told to attend a Zoom meeting about how to get clean.
So, Mr. Speaker, I had a whole section
about the economic record and the debt and deficit and everything like that,
but I’ll have to leave that till later in the session. And with that I will
just say I will not be supporting the motion, and I will instead be supporting
the amendment put forward by my colleague the MLA from Cumberland. Thank you.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Cut Knife-Turtleford.
James
Thorsteinson: —
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess if the member from Regina University was
brought in to pinch hit at the bottom of the ninth, I guess that makes me the
closer.
I’m honoured to rise for my reply to the
Speech from the Throne on this, the eve of the one-year anniversary of my
election as the MLA for Cut Knife-Turtleford. I can guarantee, Mr. Speaker,
that I will sleep better tonight than I did a year ago.
To say the last year has been a bit of a
whirlwind would be an understatement, as I’m sure everyone sharing this
anniversary with me would agree. Entering political life brings its significant
challenges. Long hours on the road and time spent away from family can be
difficult at times, but I am fortunate to have their love and support as I
continue on this journey.
I wouldn’t be the person I am today
without the love, support, and guidance of my parents. They’ve supported me
through all stages of my life, the good and the bad, and for that I am truly
grateful. I’d like to say a special thank you to Dad for looking after the
day-to-day on the ranch when I’m away. And I’d also like to apologize in
advance to Mom for there not being daily chores this coming winter to get Dad
out of the house.
My three sons continue to help around
the ranch when necessary, and it’s good to hear their thoughts and perspectives
on the issues of the day. My wife, Lana, and I were fortunate to not only host
the reception for my son Cody and Hayley’s wedding this summer, but I was asked
to officiate the ceremony as well.
The wedding was a beautiful outdoor
ceremony in Banff on Wednesday, then we all headed back to the ranch for the
reception on Saturday. A great time was had by all, and by some maybe a little
too good, but it was finally the motivation I needed to tidy and clean the
shop. That makes two of my sons married off, and, as Meat Loaf so eloquently
put it, two out of three ain’t bad.
Lana has been beside me all the way
since long before this journey began. She’s joined me in celebrating the good
times and supported me through the tough times. She travels with me on the road
wherever possible to various events in the community and helps at the parades,
throwing candy from the passenger side of the truck to ensure all kids get a
treat. Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to say that this year Lana and I celebrated
our 10‑year anniversary. And I am looking forward to spending many more
decades to come, side by side. I love you, honey.
Summer is a time for us as MLAs to
connect with people in our communities, to celebrate their achievements, and to
hear their concerns. I was blessed to be able to be in every community in my
constituency over the summer at parades, 4‑H achievement days, fairs,
openings, and more. Cut Knife-Turtleford is vibrant and thriving, and I am
honoured to be your MLA. Thank you for placing your trust in me to serve you,
and I pledge to always work to make the communities of this great constituency
and communities across Saskatchewan strong, safe, and secure.
Think about those words for a minute —
strong, safe, secure. Strong economy, safe communities, and a secure future.
Doesn’t that sound like something we can all get behind, Mr. Speaker?
Of course it all starts with a strong
economy. It’s through a strong economy that we’re able to provide the services
that Saskatchewan people deserve. In this year’s Speech from the Throne our
government highlights just a handful of the many policies that assist the
people of Saskatchewan, grow our economy.
Mr. Speaker, Saskatchewan has what the
world wants — no, what the world needs. We have the people and resources here
to fulfill those needs, and we’re doing just that.
What I hear over and over from across the country and around the world is that
people would just like government to get out of the way, let businesses do
business. This government’s doing just that. By reducing the red tape that
creates unnecessary hurdles for businesses to succeed, we have saved
Saskatchewan companies nearly $700 million.
But, Mr. Speaker, there’s still more
work to do. That’s why we’re introducing the Saskatchewan internal trade
promotion Act which will promote freer trade across all provincial borders,
making it easier for Saskatchewan businesses to do business in other provinces.
When you represent a constituency that runs along the border, you can’t help
but think about how beneficial this could be for those that you serve.
We are encouraging business growth by
implementing the small and medium enterprise tax credit, which helps those in
the food, beverage, machinery, and transportation industries attract
investment. The Saskatchewan young entrepreneur bursary, which is administered
by local chambers of commerce across the province, is awarded to individuals
looking to grow or start their businesses in communities across the province.
The winners of this year’s bursary will be announced soon, and I would like to
say congratulations to all of the recipients.
[22:00]
We will continue to make Saskatchewan
one of the best places in the world for companies to explore, invest, and
develop resources that the world needs. That investment creates jobs and
stability for Saskatchewan residents, particularly those in northern Saskatchewan.
Mr. Speaker, oil and gas is a key
economic driver in the constituency of Cut Knife-Turtleford. A strong oil
sector is vital to the economic prosperity of the region and the province.
Continued investments by companies such as Strathcona, Cenovus, CNR rail, Cardinal, and others create good jobs for the
residents of Cut Knife-Turtleford, providing a better quality of life and
helping grow our communities.
Of course the other key industry in the
area is agriculture. This year’s cash crop is just beginning to hit the markets
and prices are very strong. Livestock producers are excited about the future
and are able to make perhaps some overdue investments in their operations. With
harvest now wrapped up, producers in the area are overall quite happy with this
year’s crop. With the exception of a few small pockets where rain was short and
yields were down, most of the crop was above average in yield with excellent
quality.
Mr. Speaker, there is no question that
recent trade disputes with our two largest trading partners are causing
headwinds for Saskatchewan farmers, and I am thankful we have a premier who
will stand up for Saskatchewan’s world-class agricultural producers. The first
premier in six years to lead a trade mission to China, our Premier continues to
lead in the fight against Chinese tariffs on canola, peas, and pork.
Thanks to our trade office in Shanghai,
we were able to get meetings with Chinese officials that even our Canadian
ambassador had been unable to secure. Mr. Speaker, our various trade offices
around the world are opening up opportunities for Saskatchewan to expand our
international trade and become less reliant on China and the United States.
Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge that we are
facing some challenges to our economic prosperity. Some are a continuation of
the last decade of policies brought forward by the federal government, and some
are caused by the trade policies of other countries. However despite those
challenges, Saskatchewan has the strongest economy in Canada. We have the
lowest unemployment rate, and we lead the country in investment growth. I can
only imagine how different those stats would be if we were to let the
opposition NDP close our international trade offices as they campaigned on, or
nationalize our oil industry as they debated at their recent convention.
Mr. Speaker, Saskatchewan residents
deserve to feel safe in their communities. This government is continuing to
make investments to ensure you and your family are able to go for an evening
stroll, take your kids to the local park, and support your local small
business. Our government continues to call on the federal government alongside
municipal leaders to implement meaningful bail reform.
All too often offenders, some violent,
are released on bail almost automatically only to reoffend once back in the
community. We need to ensure that those who have repeatedly committed violent
crimes remain in custody in order to protect the public. Placing reverse onus
on repeat violent offenders for bail will mean that the defence has to prove
why a person charged should receive bail, not the Crown having to prove why
they shouldn’t.
It’s no secret that most of the crime
that threatens the safety and security of Saskatchewan residents has one root
cause — the trafficking and use of illicit drugs. We need to remove those drugs
from our streets so that the good people of Saskatchewan feel safe. That is why
we passed the safe public spaces Act and have made recent amendments to The
Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act and The Trespass to Property
Act.
We will also be introducing the response
to illicit drugs Act to protect families from the harms associated with the
illegal drug trade by cracking down on those who bring this poison into our
communities.
Our government isn’t just passing laws
to deal with illicit drugs. We are investing in additional law enforcement
personnel to enforce those laws. We have committed to funding nearly 400 new
officers across the province, including RCMP, municipal officers, and the
Saskatchewan marshals service.
Mr. Speaker, while we need to stop the
flow of illegal drugs into our communities, we also need to help those who have
unfortunately fallen into a life of addiction. Rather than enabling the
addiction, our government is focused on a recovery-oriented system of care. We
have committed to opening 500 addictions treatment beds across the province,
with nearly 300 open and serving those battling addictions today.
With two complex-needs facilities open
in the province — one each in Saskatoon and Regina — those who may be at their
lowest point have an opportunity to begin their journey of recovery. Those who
are taken to a complex-needs facility have the option of being released to
police custody, released to a family member, or self-referring to community
supports. The self-referral rate is over 90 per cent, Mr. Speaker. It is clear
that this model is working, and I am glad to see it being expanded to the
communities of North Battleford and Prince Albert.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, there are
those who may not be in a position to seek the help they need on their own.
These people may be members of your community or maybe members of your own
family, people whose addiction may be causing them to risk, be a risk to
themselves or to others. That is why we will be introducing the compassionate
intervention Act. This Act will make it possible to require those who are a
risk to themselves or others get the addictions treatment they desperately need
but are unable to ask for, keeping our families and communities safe and
secure.
People should feel safe, not only in
their homes and communities but online as well. That is why we are introducing
the cyberstalking and coercive control Act to amend the definition of
“interpersonal violence” to include cyberstalking and harassment. Cyberbullying
can be devastating to a person’s psyche, emotional well-being, and self-esteem,
and everyone deserves to be protected from this behaviour.
Mr. Speaker, it’s often said that the
children are our future and that is so true. That is why our government is
giving our students their best start by making record investments in education.
We are particularly focused on K to 3 [kindergarten to grade 3] reading
outcomes, because those who are able to read at a grade level coming out of
grade 3 experience better learning outcomes throughout the rest of their
educational journey.
We are also investing in early learning
and development for kids not yet going to school. I was honoured to attend the
open house for the Heritage Daycare in Lashburn,
which expects to welcome pre-K children beginning November 1st. The 45 new
spaces will help attract young families to keep this community vibrant and
growing for generations to come. We are also investing in spaces in Neilburg, Edam, and Wilkie. When those three projects are
complete, that will be an additional 80 child care spaces in Cut Knife-Turtleford
alone.
The early learning and child care
agreement with the federal government, while beneficial, was not perfect. That
is why we are continuing to work on negotiating a better deal for parents,
children, and caregivers. Parents and caregivers alike deserve the best
possible deal. And I know the Minister of Education is doing his due diligence
to ensure that we achieve that.
In the election just one year ago, we
committed to making sure everyone in the province has access to a primary
health care provider. With one urgent care centre open in Regina and one under
construction in Saskatoon, people have the opportunity to avoid the emergency
department, reducing congestion and wait times and improving outcomes. With
planning under way for additional urgent care centres in Prince Albert, Moose
Jaw, and North Battleford, as well as one more each in Saskatoon and Regina,
these communities are sure to see a streamlining of services and an improvement
in health care outcomes.
The health care human resources action
plan has brought in nearly 350 more doctors and 2,100 more nurses since being
introduced in 2022. Add to this the expansion of nurse practitioners and the
new physician assistant program at the University of Saskatchewan, and we are
well positioned to meet our goal of everyone having access to a primary care
provider.
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have had the
opportunity to highlight just a few of the ways our government is working to
ensure we have a strong economy, safe communities, and a secure future. And as
I said earlier, isn’t that something we can all get behind? So, Mr. Speaker,
for all of these reasons and more, I will be supporting the motion put forward
by the member from Weyburn-Bengough, seconded by the member from Carrot River
Valley, and I will not be supporting the amendment.
Speaker
Goudy: — I
recognize the member from Saskatoon Stonebridge.
Darcy
Warrington: —
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re almost at 10:30. We’re almost there, folks. Thank
you, Mr. Speaker. It’s always an honour to be on my feet representing the great
people of Saskatoon Stonebridge. And in particular tonight, the opportunity to
speak on and respond to the Speech from the Throne is one that is not taken for
granted by myself. However I’ll start by reflecting on those closest to me who
are only the beginning of the list of people I should be thanking, but who by
all means I would be almost nothing without.
The first person I’ll thank is Saskatoon
Stonebridge’s constituency assistant, Levi Nilson. I meant to thank him third
to my son and wife, but was worried I would start with tears instead of cheers.
Levi has been recognized prior in this legislature on occasion, and his story
is no stranger to Hansard. Thanks for steering the ship, Levi. I’m
entirely certain there’s no one I’d rather have guiding our work for Saskatoon
Stonebridge and its amazing people. They are in good hands due to your
experience, character, and compassion.
Secondly but above all else, I’d like to
thank my six-year-old son, Miles, and my partner of 22 years, Christina. In
some ways Miles gets the benefit of seeing his dad in situations he maybe
wouldn’t have if I was still a teacher — walking him to school every day; being
able to take him to more extracurr without my own extracurr as a teacher, whether it’s tae
kwon do, baseball, basketball; going to the library; going to the park. He’s
such an energetic and life-loving human being.
But many times Dad is unexpectedly gone
for random last-minute evening events, consecutive days away in Regina,
therefore missing for many of those fun moments he loves, including his evening
bath and stories at bedtime. Last week my son, in tears, was upset that a
last-minute evening meeting had been announced to him before suppertime. And
though I’ll always try my best to make those moments up to my son, Miles, I
know he will have to continue to share his dad with other people who might need
his help.
And to my wife, Christina: I ask too
much of you and you give so selflessly. You’re truly the light of my son’s
life, and Miles and I are so lucky to have you in our life.
I speak on behalf of all of the members
of this legislature across political lines. I understand our spouses and kids
give up the most — I think we all do — so we may serve our constituents. The
province owes them some appreciation for those sacrifices that they make to
have their moms or dads, wives or husbands away from where all the great
memories are made.
[22:15]
To my colleagues: I encourage us all to
find ways to keep these connections and normalcy with our loved ones, those
acknowledgements being made, and the recognition of all of my colleagues and
what their families have given up.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to respond to the
Speech from the Throne. In particular, I will be highlighting what I felt was
absent from the Throne Speech.
Though admittedly education hasn’t been
top of mind in the media since arbitration was agreed upon, I would like to
start here, as education will always be near and dear to my heart — and, it
should be noted, is still incredibly important to such a young community like
Stonebridge.
Through my career as a teacher, I could
talk at great length how teachers and students that I’ve come to know are
failed by this Throne Speech. It failed to acknowledge deficiencies in space
for new schools, current space for new schools, as well as new schools being
built in a timely fashion in general. I must highlight how this speech fails
the kids of St. Kateri in Saskatoon Stonebridge who can no longer go to their
neighbourhood school if not grandfathered-in a few blocks away as it’s too
full, and have to bus across Circle Drive to get to another school. This story
exists in its entirety in the same way with Aspen Ridge residents. How this
speech fails students who have intense physical and intellectual disabilities
being sent home an hour before all other students every day, or worse, being
temporarily excluded and being sent home at lunch every day due to lack of
supports. Shame.
I worked from 2023 until the fall of
2024 at wâhkôhtowin School in Saskatoon Fairview.
Well over half of their students are of First Nations descent and
proportionately, roughly half of their EAs [educational assistant] were funded
by Jordan’s principle. When Jordan’s principle funding ran out earlier this year,
several EAs were lost to the student population there and in too many other
schools. Jordan’s principle was created by the federal government to defeat
levels of government pointing fingers at each other: “Who is responsible to
support First Nations children and others?”
This Sask
Party government should have immediately done the right thing and announced
they would fund the shortfalls across the province. Instead, they allowed
schools with higher First Nations representation than others to just make it
work with what they have, disproportionately affecting schools negatively that
have higher First Nations populations. They should have taken the opportunity
to make it right in the Throne Speech. Shame.
When it comes to health care, the Throne
Speech was full of self-congratulations. And don’t forget the amendment to our
motion on Thursday, talking about how good things supposedly are in
Saskatchewan and how the government’s plan will make it even better. But we’ve
heard that same promise year after year, and for most people nothing has
improved.
There needs to be more acknowledgement
of how health care needs to be so much more for the people of Saskatchewan.
Now I’m a numbers guy, a statistics
nerd. And if the government really wanted to be transparent they wouldn’t just
tell us the stats on how many doctors — or the 2,100 nurses that were just
announced by the member opposite — that they’ve hired; they’d also tell us how
many left. Those are the numbers that matter. Those are the numbers this tired,
out-of-touch government doesn’t seem to want to share with us.
We need big, bold change to pull health
care in Saskatchewan out of last place, and here’s why. At Royal University
Hospital, 450 health care workers signed their names out of pure desperation
pleading for emergency support. Some of those people are my friends and family;
many more are my constituents in Saskatoon Stonebridge. And the same stories
can be said about St. Paul’s Hospital — emergency rooms running at 200 per cent
capacity or more routinely. Shame.
These workers are doing everything they
can. They shouldn’t have to carry this blame for a system that’s failed them.
It’s funny seeing the minister laughing at that comment. They’re exhausted,
demoralized and losing confidence. Sometimes they don’t even get paid on time
due to AIMS which is running over 200 per cent over budget. Retention is
getting harder every day, and who can blame them when their government refuses
to support them?
And then there are the patients too
often waiting eight hours or more in emergency rooms, sometimes a full day
before getting a bed. Imagine being in your worst moment, confined to a hallway
without privacy or dignity. Or somehow worse, not getting a bed for an extended
period of time.
One constituent of mine, Daegan, told me
he’s chosen not to go to the ER on occasion, even when seriously ill with his
illness because he wasn’t sure he’d be seen in less than eight hours. No one
should ever have to make that kind of choice. It’s time for honesty,
accountability, and action. Because Saskatchewan deserves a health care system
that works for the people who rely on it, and for the people who keep it
running every single day.
I talked earlier today at length about
seniors desperate for rent controls to stay in their home. And I will echo that
people in Saskatoon Stonebridge in general recognize and understand that doing
nothing for those folks, asking them somehow to afford 10 to 30 per cent annual
rent increases is unacceptable. The Speech from the Throne failed to speak to
those. But I’ll let those comments stand on their own and focus a little longer
on how changes to SIS would make the province better and safer for all.
While homelessness and crime in our
neighbourhood grows, housing is definitely the root cause. Changing SIS is
simple, cost-effective, and would create an opportunity for Saskatchewan.
Now I was going to go on at great length
about this, but I have to make a cut here, so I’ll just simply say this: if we
were to simply move the payment from tenants to landlords in the way that it
used to exist in this province, then we would be able to get a lot of people
housed. There’d be less desperation, there’d be less encampments, and there
would be less people resorting to crime in our community in Saskatoon
Stonebridge. And that’s just one simple thing the government should have put in
their Throne Speech.
For more of a Parks, Culture and Sport
perspective, I’ve been fortunate to experience nine provincial parks, a few
regional parks, and numerous campers and workers there over the summer. It
should be noted we have almost 100 regional parks in our province too, so I’ll
certainly be adding to my travels next summer.
But to the provincial park experiences.
I truly enjoyed the opportunity to jump in the lakes, go for a swim, swing some
golf clubs, throw some disc golf, minigolf — no shortage of golf in our
provincial parks — mountain biking, and my personal favourite, hiking. Some of
these experiences were documented on YouTube. Feel free to check them out.
We have some spectacular views in the
province via hiking, including from the top of Mount Blackstrap. I made it up
in five minutes with some hustle, and I challenge the rest of the room to see
if they could do better. The views there or in Cypress Hills, Buffalo Pound,
Lac La Ronge, and so many of our dozens of provincial parks are always
spectacular and only to be experienced right here in Saskatchewan.
However, we still have asked the
ministry time and time again for a list of private companies contracted within
and towards work done in our provincial parks, to seek out where American
enterprise is being allowed and encouraged before national and provincial
entities. While Aspira Connect is doing business from New York and Texas
without ever having stepped foot in our parks, we are hearing more and more
that booking fees are unreasonably high and that lifelong campers are
experiencing issues with the system, when these online portals could be
operated by our own tech companies right here in Saskatchewan.
But that discussion will continue in
coming weeks, as we hope to learn more about the particular companies
contracted within our parks that were promised to be shared by the minister and
ministry officials with us during committee last spring session.
Visual and performing arts were entirely
absent from the Throne Speech. Regina Folk Festival just officially folded
early in 2025. Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan openly pointed out that they
were very close to shuttering the doors themselves without great philanthropic
assistance and donation matching. And one of our province’s major jewels, the
Saskatchewan Jazz Festival, is losing hundreds of thousands, seeking out a new
major sponsor. These stories, in my mind, are the canaries in the coal mine. If
they were to even close down for a season they might think it is a stopgap to
stay afloat in future years, but Regina Folk Fest might tell you that that is
not a winning solution either.
Some of these festivals and performing
arts companies employ obviously more than just a single artist. Performing arts
companies often employ multiple people, even dozens of people per production.
It takes a village to make a dramatic production at Persephone or a TV show
filmed in Moose Jaw that will stream on Netflix and Prime.
As the provincial government boasts, we
have comparatively lower costs of living than many other jurisdictions in
Canada. That being said, we are building and rebuilding the infrastructure for
industries like film, after tax credits for them were suddenly removed a decade
ago.
And while they admirably are rebuilding,
incentives, credits, and human resources in other jurisdictions are still
routinely chose more and more to attract these filmmakers, television show
producers, video game developers, animators, theatre shows, festivals than what
we have unfortunately been able to offer them here in Saskatchewan.
Investing more in arts and culture would
create an economic boom here in our province and shift some of these businesses
from setting up shop in BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. That
investment would be repaid through income taxes, purchases subject to PST
[provincial sales tax], and so much more over and over and over again with a
proactive spirit and vision.
I’ve spoken with many organizations that
bring amateur sport to youth and adults across this province . . .
And I’m running short on time, so I’m going to fast-forward a little bit. While
many of these athletic organizations are grateful for the support from Sask Lotteries, they tell me they are funded pretty well
and they provide meaningful support for many youth who might not be able to
normally afford to play hockey, basketball, volleyball, to dance. The list
obviously goes on and on.
They are able to supplement by paying
for coaches, instructors, facility time, even equipment. But even in funding
all of those things, one of the things I’ve heard from these organizations is
transportation. Transportation to and from practices, games, events, and
competitions will often still prevent too many of our children — and in many
situations First Nations youth — will often still prevent them from
participation.
I encourage the minister to reach out to
these organizations to ask if more support should be provided for kids to get
to the game, day after day, so that they may have the same opportunity that
every child in our province deserves — without falling through the cracks.
Overall my colleagues and I have been
diligent in canvassing well over half of our ridings since spring session ended
in May. Residents often said to us, “Is there an election?” But they became
pleasantly surprised to see that we were there to hear what they thought, what
they wanted for their province. I had a joke there, but I’ll take it out to
keep things rolling.
Our constituents have shared with us all
how in particular . . . [inaudible interjection] . . . You
want to hear it? I wonder how many Sask Party
government MLAs knocked on doors this summer . . . [inaudible
interjection] . . . Yeah, I was aware of a couple of those. Yeah, two
or three for sure. Two or three for sure.
Regardless of my excellent joke, health
care, cost-of-living increases, and crime and safety issues in our community
are becoming something that they never imagined when first moving to Saskatoon
Stonebridge. Many say to us that they’ve never seen it like this. Where is the
peace of mind and safety that they enjoyed in the past? Where is the concrete
plan to attract more doctors, nurses, and staff to our family clinics and
emergency rooms? And where is the emphasis on making life more affordable for
families that are struggling to make ends meet?
We know the Speech from the Throne — at
least our side knows — is too general, lacking a vision to improve, and that is
missing far too many details, which is common for throne speeches, I’ll give
you that.
This said, I will not be supporting the
motion from the member from Weyburn-Bengough and I will be wholeheartedly
supporting the amendment from the member from Cumberland. Thank you, Mr.
Speaker, and I move to adjourn debate.
Speaker
Goudy: — The member has moved to adjourn
debate. Is it the pleasure of the Assembly to adopt the motion?
Some
Hon. Members: — Agreed.
Speaker
Goudy: — Carried. I recognize the Minister of
Government Relations.
Hon. Eric
Schmalz: —
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move that the House now adjourn.
Speaker
Goudy: — It’s been moved that the Assembly do
now adjourn. Is it the pleasure of the Assembly to adopt the motion?
Some
Hon. Members: — Agreed.
Speaker
Goudy: — This Assembly stands adjourned until
tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. Thank you.
[The Assembly adjourned at 22:29.]
Published
under the authority of the Hon. Todd Goudy, Speaker
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